Human geography

G.A. Jones
2790009

2009

Undergraduate study in Economics, Management, Finance and the Social Sciences

This guide was prepared for the University of London External System by: Dr Gareth A. Jones, Senior Lecturer in Development Geography, London School of Economics. This is one of a series of subject guides published by the University. We regret that due to pressure of work the author is unable to enter into any correspondence relating to, or arising from, the guide. If you have any comments on this subject guide, favourable or unfavourable, please use the form at the back of this guide. This subject guide is for the use of University of London External students registered for programmes in the fields of Economics, Management, Finance and the Social Sciences (as applicable). The programmes currently available in these subject areas are: Access route Diploma in Economics Diploma in Social Sciences Diplomas for Graduates BSc Accounting and Finance BSc Accounting with Law/Law with Accounting BSc Banking and Finance BSc Business BSc Development and Economics BSc Economics BSc Economics and Finance BSc Economics and Management BSc Geography and Environment BSc Information Systems and Management BSc International Relations BSc Management BSc Management with Law/Law with Management BSc Mathematics and Economics BSc Politics BSc Politics and International Relations BSc Sociology BSc Sociology with Law.

The External System Publications Office University of London Stewart House 32 Russell Square London WC1B 5DN United Kingdom website: www.londonexternal.ac.uk Published by: University of London Press University of London 2009 Printed by: Central Printing Service, University of London, England

Contents

Contents
Introduction Aims of the unit Learning outcomes Structure of the guide Reading advice Essential reading Further reading Syllabus Examination advice List of acronyms used in this guide Section 1: Human geography as a discipline Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge Essential reading Further reading Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes Visualising geographical knowledge Columbus, Mercator and the whole earth Sir Halford Mackinders The Pivot of History The London Underground Maps and geographical warfare Eclectic atlases Concluding comment A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination question Chapter 2: The history of geographical ideas Essential reading Further reading Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes Introduction War and Empire Popular geography Environmental determinism The quantitative revolution Behavioural and humanist geography Radical geography, structuralism and Marxism The Cultural Turn, post-modernism and post-structuralism Afterword, afterward A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination questions Chapter 3: Geographical methods Essential reading Further reading Works cited Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes Introduction Quantitative methods Sample size 1 2 2 2 3 4 4 6 7 8 11 13 13 13 14 14 14 16 20 22 24 25 26 27 27 29 29 29 31 31 31 32 34 35 37 39 40 42 44 45 45 47 47 47 48 48 49 49 51 51

09 Human geography

Secondary data Question bias and researcher control Interpretation Indices Qualitative methods Reading landscapes Intention and meaning Contested meanings Landscape, place and identity Qualitative approaches and rigour A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination question Section 2: Geographical views of the world Chapter 4: Geographical views of the economy Essential reading Further reading Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes Introduction Simple location models Structural models: from Fordism to new industrial division of labour From international division of labour to globalisation New economic geography: regionalism and global production clusters A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination question Chapter 5: Different structures of world polity Essential reading Further reading Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes Geopolitics: definition, rise and decline The Cold War: realist geopolitics Post-Cold War: a new geopolitical disorder Critical geopolitics A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination question Section 3: Resources, population and sustainability Chapter 6: Environment, resources and sustainability Essential reading Further reading Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes Introduction Resource scarcity and the pessimists Population crisis, what crisis? Sustainable development A new scarcity and deep ecology Global warming and new questions on science A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination question

52 53 54 55 56 56 58 60 62 65 67 68 69 71 71 71 72 72 73 73 75 78 81 84 84 85 85 85 86 86 86 89 95 98 102 102 103 105 105 105 106 106 106 107 111 112 115 118 120 120

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Contents

Chapter 7: Population movements Essential reading Further reading Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes Theories and patterns of migration International migration, refugee regime and diaspora The changing policy response Integration and assimilation A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination question Section 4: The geography of cities Chapter 8: The geography of cities Essential reading Further reading Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes Anti-urbanism and utopianism The Chicago School: morphology and urban systems Modernism and planning From suburbs to postmodern city of bits Community and gentrification The death of public space The gated community A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination question Chapter 9: An urbanising world Further reading Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes A new world urban geography Over-urbanisation, mega-cities and urban primacy The informal sector and self-help Contemporary images A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination questions Chapter 10: Global cities Essential reading Further reading Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes Definitions of global and world cities Critique A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination question Section 5:Global interactions Chapter 11: Geographies of development Essential reading Further reading Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes The invention of development and the underdeveloped world The geopolitics of development: a first moment of refusal

121 121 121 122 122 122 125 130 131 135 135 137 139 139 139 140 140 140 142 143 146 148 150 152 153 153 155 155 155 156 156 160 165 169 171 171 173 173 173 173 174 174 180 183 183 185 187 187 187 188 188 188 199

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09 Human geography

The non-aligned movement The geopolitics of development: a second moment of refusal A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination questions Chapter 12: The cultural geography of consumption Essential reading Further reading Aims of the chapter Learning outcomes Cultural imperialism and global commodity chains The political economy of global cultural change The tourist map Conclusion A reminder of your learning outcomes Sample examination questions Appendix 1: Sample examination paper Appendix 2: Full list of Further reading Books Journals

202 203 207 207 209 209 209 210 210 210 215 217 223 223 223 225 227 227 231

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Introduction

Introduction
Human geography is all around us, making us all in some sense geographers. Open a broadsheet newspaper or switch on the televised news and we will probably be presented with a map that, it will be claimed, at least informs us of a particular event or, possibly, even provides some explanation as to why that event has occurred. As this guide is being written, in recent days newspapers in the United Kingdom have contained news items about the movement of refugees in South-east Asia, flows of return migrants across Europe, the distribution of bank debt around the world, plant closures in the US, army territorial gains and losses in Sri Lanka, and military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. And these are all before we get to the travel section. Geography too is all around us in other ways. Our shopping trolley, for example, may contain an enormous variety of products which the labels inform us contain ingredients sourced in more than one country. What the label is less likely to tell us is that the processing, packaging, advertising and financing is also the product of more than one country. The product itself may be available in thousands of towns and cities in many countries, it may have begun its journey as raw materials in Egypt, Cyprus or Mauritius, have been cleaned and packed in Turkey, advertised and financed from New York, shipped by a company under a Panamanian flag with an ethnic Chinese crew, become subject to World Trade Organization rulings and, even before docking at Rotterdam, have been subject to inspection to check compliance with European Union environmental requirements. The logistics of getting products to thousands of shop shelves is co-ordinated from Newcastle and invoices are paid from a back office in Delhi. Finally, some of the product may make its way into aid programmes, or be incinerated or dumped in other countries. Our shopping trolley is geography, it is globalisation, a signature of the new economy and a cipher for environmental degradation. This subject guide outlines how we can understand the geography around us by considering some of the key themes in the discipline. These themes develop through a disciplinary history. While Plato or Leonardo da Vinci might have claimed to be early geographers, or at least possessed of geographical insights, geography is usually dated from the early-nineteenth century; in part as this coincides with the flourishing of local geographical societies and associations across Europe, including the establishment of the Royal Geographical Society in 1830. Yet it was not until 1874 that the first Department of geography opened, in Germany, and even then, it was without a cohort of professional geographers to employ, but instead included geologists and biologists among its earliest staff. Therefore we must recognise geography at this time, as a discipline in early formation. It has evolved gradually over time, with the emergence of new sub-themes such as political geography, the rise of positivism in the 1960s, and the new cultural geography and economic geography developing from the 1990s. Geography, and geographers, have been at the forefront of recent debates about globalisation, urbanisation, social exclusion and sustainability. This subject guide recognises geographys enormous breadth of scope in such a way that does not undermine its intellectual focus. One of the core tensions in geography is how we might build up a general understanding without losing sight of the diversity of human experience. How, for example, can we understand rural to urban migration generally, when the process may be different between Kansas and Chicago, Mpumalanga and

09 Human geography

Johannesburg, or Yinchuan and Beijing? Can we use the same skills to decode the multiple meanings behind the Woolworth Building in New York as well as a lesser known building in Caracas, Istanbul or Sydney? To help us ground our understanding, most of the topics covered in the subject guide are thematic with reference to specific case studies taken from different countries. While it is advisable to learn about other parts of the world beyond where we may presently live, there is nothing wrong with drawing examples and inspiration from the local area. Indeed, the earliest practitioners of geography as a discipline, people such as A.J. Herbertson, H.J. Fleure and Patrick Geddes, believed that geography had to be understood from the ground at our feet and then worked up into an appreciation of broader processes, and these broader processes were valued for how they informed the local. While this idea formed the basis of regional geography in the early twentieth-century, it is a relationship that reappears in many debates about space and place, and what is local and global well into the twenty-first century. Therefore I hope that this subject guide enables you to maximise your knowledge and understanding of Human geography, and to use the skills you acquire from the learning process to best effect in the examination process. I wish you very good luck with this task!

Aims of the unit

The subject guide assists with the delivery of three key aims in the Human geography unit. These are to: introduce you to key current debates in geography and to position these debates within the history of geographical ideas enable you to obtain a broad knowledge of a range of contemporary geographical issues and to understand how these have developed over time provide a basic understanding of economic, social, cultural and political concerns from a global and local perspective.

Learning outcomes
On completion of this unit, and the relevant reading and activities, you should be able to: understand the theoretical contribution and development of geography to the social sciences critically analyse processes of contemporary economic, social, cultural and political change from a geographical perspective appreciate the importance of understanding both diversity and homogeneity to the process of geographical enquiry discuss alternative understandings of how the global and the local human environment are connected.

Structure of the guide

In order to deliver these outcomes, the subject guide is divided into five sections. These cover a selection of the main themes that form the basis of the debates in Human geography. Taken together, they build up a picture of the main ideas or movements that have formed geography into a serious academic discipline; and the principal methods that have been deployed around social, cultural, economic and political perspectives.

Introduction

Section 1 explores how we might think of geography as a discipline that provides some intellectual bite to historical and contemporary social, economic and cultural processes. The section outlines the emergence of the discipline, its key ideas and organisation, and the research methods that we commonly employ to investigate spatial processes. Section 2 gives an overview of geographys understanding of world economies; where the economics of global production, trade and finance (including an understanding of the forces influencing the location of economic activities) are considered alongside different structures of world polity. This section introduces concepts of geopolitics, and how the global and regional events of the past 60 years can be mapped. Section 3 examines fundamental debates around resources, population and sustainability. Important issues here are those of population growth and migration, resource depletion, environmental despoliation and the meaning of sustainability. Section 4 focuses on the geography of cities. Here models of urban growth and decline are considered, and we look at the emergence of global cities and consider whether cities in developed and developing world contexts can be understood as essentially the same or different. Section 5 is specifically about theorising processes of development and globalisation in NorthSouth interactions, how global commodity chains emerge, what we mean by global consumerism and cultural imperialism, and how travel and tourism might be thought about geographically and critically. Working your way through the subject guide is not a replacement for reading around the subject. Instead, it acts as a pointer to the most important issues, explaining what they mean, and outlining the ways in which the topic should be approached. At the end of each chapter, there is at least one activity that you can use to test your understanding and skills. In some cases, these activities suggest that you draw upon materials from your local area, either in the form of observation, data collation or news reports. Each chapter also includes an indicative selection of examination questions. In most cases, these questions are drawn from actual examination papers. You might approach them as limited-time or research-based essays.

Reading advice
Each chapter provides guidance on Essential and Further reading. Wherever possible I have chosen one or two essential texts that will provide you with the basic concepts and issues on a particular theme. Further reading points you to sources mentioned in the chapter text and to cutting-edge articles that offer new analysis or aim to be thought-provoking. Further reading will broaden and deepen your understanding, allowing you to develop your arguments more clearly. In some cases, reading will provide you with case study materials for use in examinations but, as indicated already, it is just as important that you think about how to relate these readings to materials that you can collect yourself from your local area.

09 Human geography

Essential reading
There is no single textbook for this unit. However, in putting together the subject guide, I have found the following two books extremely useful and I recommend either for purchase:
Cloke, P P Crang and M. Goodwin (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. ., . (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005) second edition [ISBN 9780340882764]. Johnston, R.J., P Taylor and M.J. Watts Geographies of Global Change: .J. Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) second edition [ISBN 9780631222866].

The following three textbooks are also very useful:

Daniels, P M. Bradshaw, D. Shaw and J. Sidaway An Introduction to Human ., Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008) [ISBN 9780132056847 (pbk)]. Haggett, P Geography: A Global Synthesis. (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2001) . [ISBN 9780582320307 (pbk)]. Knox, P and S. Marston (eds) Human Geography: Places and Regions in Global . Context. (Longman, 2009) fifth edition [ISBN 9780321580023].

Further reading
Each chapter lists Further reading which is not essential to pass the unit but you are always strongly advised to read widely. A full list is provided in Appendix 2 at the end of this subject guide.

Journals
To help you read extensively, all External students have free access to the University of London Online library where you will find the full text or an abstract of some of the journal articles listed in this guide. You will need to use the same username and password to access this resource that you are sent to use for the Student Portal. The Online library can be accessed from the Student Portal at http://my.londonexternal.ac.uk/london/portal You are encouraged to consult current issues of general geography, many of which will be mentioned in this guide and should be available electronically. The most important are:
Annals of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) Antipode Area Disasters Economic Geography Environment and Planning (four separate journals: A, B, C, D) Environment and Urbanisation Gender, Place and Culture Geoforum Geographical Journal Geographical Review Geography International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Political Geography Progress in Development Studies Progress in Human Geography Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography Third World Quarterly

Introduction Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Urban Studies World Development.

Regional journals are also important, such as the following:

Bulletin of Latin American Research Journal of Latin American Studies Journal of Modern African Studies Pacific Asia Review of African Political Economy.

Using the Internet

The Internet is an invaluable source of information especially for statistics and figures. However, as far as possible you should consult reputable sites such as those mentioned below. Always be aware that the quality of the sites may not be very high. Do not use Internet sources as a replacement for books and journals; you should use them only as a complement.
www.antislavery.org www.brettonwoodsproject.org www.cafod.org.uk www.crin.org www.dfid.gov.uk www.ecpat.net website of Anti-Slavery International website of the Bretton Woods Project website of the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development website of Child Rights Information Network website of the UKs Department for International Development End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes Global Movement for Children website of the Inter-American Development Bank website of the International Organization for Migration website of the Maquila Solidarity Network (reports on factory conditions in developing countries) website of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development website of Oxfam, UK United Nations website on HIV/AIDS website of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development website of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees website of the United Nations Development Programme website of the United Nations Childrens Fund website of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development website of the World Bank World Resources Institute

www.gmfc.org www.iadb.org www.iom.ch www.maquilasolidarity.org

www.oecd.org

www.oxfam.org www.unaids.org www.unctad.org www.unhcr.org www.undp.org www.unicef.org www.unrisd.org www.worldbank.org www.wri.org

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Global news media also provide useful sources such as:

The BBC (www.bbc.co.uk) The Economist (www.economist.com) The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk).

Finally, there are a number of geographical organisations that include important information on their websites, especially:
www.amergeog.org www.aag.org www.geography.org.uk www.rgs.org The American Geographical Society The Association of American Geographers The Geographical Association The Royal Geographical Society.

Syllabus
Section 1: Human geography as a discipline
The history of geographical ideas: Travel writing and exploration, discussion of the development of key sub-disciplines in geography from regional geography, behavioural and humanist approaches, radical geography, locality and place, new economic geography, postmodernism and new cultural geography. The history of geographical methods: Quantitative methods, qualitative methods, synthetic approaches, data sources. Different views of the world: How maps are used in the presentation of geographical knowledge; examples from Mackinders Pivot of History, Apollo space photographs, the London Underground.

Section 2: Geographical views of world economies

Different structures of the world economy: Global capital financial circulation, offshore banking, debt. Global labour international division of labour, export processing zones, feminisation of labour. Global trade Free Trade Areas, World Trade Organization. Different structures of world polity: Nation state definition, rise and decline. The Cold War development, authoritarianism, democracy. Post-Cold War New World Order, rogue states, humanitarianism. Location of economic activities: Legacy of classical location theory. Global shifts in economic activity. Economic policies for market intervention.

Section 3: Resources, population and sustainability

Resources and Sustainability: Nature of resources. Resource depletion debates. Pollution and economic development. Population and Sustainability: Population profiles: ageing and youth societies. Population trap and resource depletion. Sustainable growth, Rio Summit, Brown versus Green agendas. Population Movements: Theories of ruralurban and international migration. Examples of population mobility and Diaspora. Introduction to issues of assimilation and integration.

Introduction

Section 4: The geography of cities

Models of urban growth, organisation and change: Anti-urbanism and Chicago School, morphology and urban systems, planning and management, new towns, suburbs and edge cities. Inner-city decline and gentrification. An urbanizing world: Mega-cities in the South, urban poverty, squatter settlements, contemporary images. Global cities: Definitions of global and world cities, new or just New York? Inequality, segregation and enclaves.

Section 5: NorthSouth interactions

Development: Cold War and Bretton Woods, modernisation and achievements, democracy, non-aligned movement post-development. Commodity Chain: How commodities move from production in the South to consumption in the North (use examples of coffee, bananas, exotics). Global Consumerism and Cultural Imperialism: Relationship between consumerism and development, dangers of cultural imperialism, hybridity, critique of the cultural dupe. Travel and Tourism: Explain how tourists see the South differently as enclaves, colonial heritage, sex tourism, opportunities for tourism development.

Examination advice
Important: the information and advice given in the following section are based on the examination structure used at the time this guide was written. Please note that subject guides may be used for several years. Because of this we strongly advise you to always check both the current Regulations for relevant information about the examination, and the current Examiners commentaries where you should be advised of any forthcoming changes. You should also carefully check the rubric/instructions on the paper you actually sit and follow those instructions. The examination for 09 Human geography is a three-hour written examination in which you will be expected to answer three questions out of a total of nine choices. Examiners set questions on any of the topics listed in the syllabus above. You will be expected to present a critical argument in relation to the questions that you answer. Answers should reflect independent reading (identified through references in the form of name and date only), and the illustration of answers using case studies. Note that some questions may prompt you to include more than one case study; for example by requesting you to: illustrate your answers with reference to at least two examples. This is a clear indication that the Examiners will be looking for detailed and thoughtful cases that refer directly to the topic. You may also refer to your own experiences, but I would suggest that you do so in addition to the case studies identified through your reading rather than as a substitute. It is also advisable to use different case studies for each question.

09 Human geography

Questions are usually phrased in order for you to develop an argument (often for and against an issue). Simple description of a topic will result in a fail grade; you will be expected to demonstrate that you are capable of analysing and not just describing. Similarly, answers that reflect no reading and only material taken from the subject guide will receive a low mark (if indeed, a pass). By contrast, an answer which is well-organised, shows evidence of reading around the subject, and which contains a good balance between argument and illustration, and analysis and description, will score highly. You will find a full Sample examination paper in Appendix 1 of this subject guide.

List of acronyms used in this guide

AIDS BID BINGO CIA DFID EOI EPZ FAO FDI GATS GATT GDP GNP HDI HIPC HIV IADB IBRD IDP IDT ILO IMF IPCC ISI IT M&A MDG MNC NAFTA NAM NASA NATO Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Business Improvement District Big international NGO Central Intelligence Agency Department for International Development (UK) Export-Oriented Industrialisation Export Processing Zone Food and Agriculture Organisation Foreign Direct Investment General Agreement on Trade in Services General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs Gross Domestic Product Gross National Product Human Development Index Highly Indebted Poor Countries Human Immunodeficiency Virus Inter American Development Bank International Bank for Reconstruction and Development Internally Displaced Person International Development Targets International Labour Organisation International Monetary Fund UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Import Substitution Industrialisation Information Technology Mergers and Acquisitions Millennium Development Goals Multinational Corporation (or Company) North American Free Trade Agreement Non-Aligned Movement North American Space Agency North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

Introduction

NEPAD NGO NID NIDL NIEO ODA OECD OPEC OSS PQLI RTA SAP TNC UN UNCHS UNCTAD UNDP UNHCR UNICEF WHO WTO

New Partnership for Africas Development Non-Governmental Organisation New Industrial Districts New International Division of Labour New International Economic Order Overseas Development Assistance Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries Office of Strategic Services Physical Quality of Life Index Regional Trade Agreements Structural Adjustment Programmes Transnational Corporation (or Company) United Nations United Nations Centre for Human Settlements United Nations Conference on Trade and Development United Nations Development Programme United Nations High Commission for Refugees United Nations Childrens Fund World Health Organization World Trade Organization

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Notes

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Section 1: Human geography as a discipline

Section 1: Human geography as a discipline

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Notes

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Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

Essential reading
Books
Crang, M. Image-Reality, in Cloke, P P Crang and M. Goodwin (eds) Introducing ., . Human Geographies. (Hodder Arnold, 2005) pp.7890.

Journals
Boeri, S. Eclectic Atlases: Four possible ways of seeing the city, Daidalos, (69/70) 1998, pp.10213. (also http://www.multiplicity.it) Cosgrove, D. Contested Global Visions: One-World, Whole-Earth, and the Apollo Space Photographs, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 84(2) 1994, pp.27094. Lacoste, Y. An Illustration of Geographical Warfare: bombing of the dikes on the Red River, North Vietnam, Antipode, 5 (2) 1973, pp.113; http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119675422/abstract Mackinder, H.J. The Geographical Pivot of History, The Geographical Journal, XXIII(4) 1904.

Further reading
Blomley, N. Law, Space, and the Geographies of Power. (New York; London: Guilford, c.1994). Boeri, S. Multiplicity: Uncertain States of Europe. (Milano: Skira, 2003). Dodds, K. Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire. (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2002). Fox, P Images in Geography Great Expectations, Geography, 90(1) 2005, .S. pp.317. Hadlaw, J. The London Underground Map: Imagining Modern Time and Space, Design Issues, 19(1) 2003, pp.2535. Harley, J.B. Rereading the maps of the Columbian Encounter, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 82(3) 1992, pp.52242. Hewitt, K. Place Annihilation: Area Bombing and the Fate of Urban Places, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 73(2) 1983, pp.25784. Mackinder, H.J. The Round World and the Winning of the Peace, Foreign Affairs, 21(4) 1943, pp.595605. Mackinder, H.J. Britain and the British Seas. (London: 1902). McHaffie, P Decoding the globe: globalism, advertising and corporate practice, . Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (15) 1997, pp.7386. OTuathail, G. Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space. (London: Routledge, 1996). Peet, R. Radical Geography: Alternative Viewpoints on Contemporary Social Issues. (Chicago: Maaroufa Press, c1977). Sloan, G. Sir Halford Mackinder: the heartland theory then and now, Journal of Strategic Studies, 22(23) 1999, pp.1538.

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Aims of the chapter

The Greek scholar Erathosthenes in the third century BC was the first person to define geography, as the combination of ge meaning earth and graphe meaning description. In this chapter I want to explore how we might understand the production and presentation of descriptions of manearth relations, that for shorthand we refer to as geographical knowledge. The chapter looks at a series of images, considers their basis in geographical knowledge, the uses they have been put to, and how maps and images of the globe form a part of our visual spatial vocabulary. I want to draw your attention to how geographical knowledge is not constructed as a perfect science but rather reflects the beliefs of society at a particular moment in time.

Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter and relevant reading, you should be able to: critically understand the role of maps/images in the formation of geography as a discipline appreciate the different ways in which we are able to understand the representation of spatial processes through maps and images of the globe.

Visualising geographical knowledge

Map From the Latin mappa meaning sheet or napkin. (Noun) a flat diagram of an area of land or sea showing physical features, cities, roads, etc. or a diagram or collection of data showing the arrangement, distribution, or sequence of something. (Verb) mapped, mapping, to represent or record on a map, or (map out) to plan in detail. (Associated Phrases), off the map very distant or remote; put on the map bring to prominence; wipe off the map obliterate totally.1

Oxford English Dictionary.

It is a correlation that is:

open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or social formation. It can be drawn on a wall, conceived as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a meditationit always has multiple entryways.2

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F.

Maps as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary have been known for almost 5,000 years. The first recorded map is thought to have been drawn around 2,700 BC in Sumaria. Maps and other forms of present geographical information, including paintings, photographs and film, have changed dramatically over the centuries, reflecting technological shifts and refinements to geographical knowledge (Fox, 2005). Today, we are presented with geographical representations of our relationship to the world in a startling variety of ways. Many of these representations appear as maps, that is abstract configurations of spatial forms. While we are accustomed to reading certain kinds of maps, most obviously the 1:25,000 scale maps used for walking in the countryside or road maps, that make a claim for realism, we can also identify more abstract versions such as maps of train routes, or tourist brochures and retail stores that use maps to

A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. (University of

Minnesota Press, 1997), p.12.

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Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

present the relations between home or consumer and destination or product. We might extend the idea of maps even further to the organograms purporting to display the internal structure of organisations. Immediately, however, we can appreciate how these maps can be considered both realistic in that they describe real relationships and unrealistic as by simplifying those relationships they distort our idea of reality. The British Ordnance Survey map, for example, uses an array of symbols to depict features in the landscape, such as these two examples: for churches P for a post office.

Obviously when we walk through a town or village we do not expect the church to look like this symbol and British Post Offices do not have a large P on the roof. Indeed, maps do not aid travel. Knowing that New York City Hall is located at 40,42N and 74W is less useful than knowing that it is on Broadway across from the Woolworth Building. A map of San Francisco shows a neat grid of straight streets criss-crossing the city as laid out by the citys founding fathers who paid no attention to natural topography. Following the map can bring some big surprises for pedestrians climbs more common to an Andes trek. For the frail, trusting the map could be fatal; and for the able-bodied it can mean being late or arriving hot with sweat. While hikers and mountaineers know that their maps must show topography to be of any use, city maps do not. They do not tell us how bad the traffic will be, the level of pollution or whether an area is dangerous or safe and for whom. As abstractions, therefore, maps can only reveal so much information. Moreover, we must be aware of who has drawn the map and with what intent: maps are not innocent as Blomley (1994) reveals in his account of the transformation of common practices into surveyed and legally-backed property rights in Elizabethan Britain and by Dodds (2002) for how maps seek to obscure or contest territorial disputes in Antarctica. We can appreciate therefore the need for a broader definition of a map, as offered for example by Deleuze and Guatarri. Before looking in more detail at some examples of maps, let us consider what it means to walk through a park in Mexico City, as I did in November 2005, and to come across a map of the city moulded on to a cow (Figure 1.1). The map itself was functional: I, like many passers-by, used it to check the location of a street in the city. Yet the map was also useless, in that the pocket-size map was now immovable. Was the Topographic Cow an authentic map or not? Complicating our interpretation of the cow still further is that the Topographic Cow formed part of an exhibition called CowParade of about 250 cows distributed across Mexico City, each modified by artists to represent the immediate vicinity. Hence, the cow in front of the Anthropology Museum wore indigenous clothing, the cow near the Azteca stadium was playing football and in the restaurant-tourist zone of Polanco the cow was standing on hind legs with a backpack. Interpreting the cows then can, to a degree, tell people about their approximate location in the city: the cows themselves become maps of the city. Finally, the cows can be thought of in terms of a larger mapping exercise. Since the CowParade idea first began in Zurich in 1998 permission has been given for cows to graze the streets and parks of Stockholm, Chicago, Johannesburg, New York, London, Prague, So Paulo, Tokyo and Buenos Aires. The CowParade therefore puts Mexico City on a map of global artistic cities.

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09 Human geography

Figure 1.1 The topographic cow (Source: Vaca Topogrfica by Benjamn Torres, photo by Gareth Jones, Mexico City) My point is that maps are not stable representations of space, despite their claims to possess a scientific or objective basis. Maps are drawn according to the particular understanding of knowledge at a given moment or for a particular purpose that the map itself may not always reveal. As Harley (1992) has observed:
all maps, like all other historically constructed images, do not provide a transparent window on the world. Rather they are signs that present a deceptive appearance of naturalness and transparence concealing an opaque, distorting, arbitrary mechanism of representation, a process of ideological mystification. (Harley, 1992, p.523, citing Mitchell)

We need to think of maps, then, as part of the geographical imagination rather than as true geographies. We should understand that maps have always been drawn and redrawn in order to illustrate a particular set of values or political needs. Let us consider some examples.

Columbus, Mercator and the whole earth

So geographers, in Afric maps With savage pictures fill their gaps, And oer uninhabitable downs, Place elephants for want of towns.

As Jonathan Swift suggests in this extract from Gullivers Travels (1726), early maps of the world were susceptible to human fantasy when accurate data were not readily to hand. The availability of geographical data, however, was itself influenced by the philosophical viewpoint of the mapmaker or user. Until well into the twentieth century this relation between philosophy and our visualisation of space was influenced by the Greeks.

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Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

Consider two ideas: First, the distinction derived from the Greeks between kenos meaning chaos or void and cosmos meaning harmony, order or relation. Chaos and harmony existed in opposition to each other. As the world was believed to exist in harmony so the task of science was to understand order (not chaos, or what today we might call difference). To the Greeks, then, science had to decide whether order was being gained as Aristotle believed, or was being lost, to follow Plato. The second idea was whether one constructed a view of order based on induction that is, generalities gained from observed facts, as Aristotle believed or from deduction; that is that theory held chief importance and proof came second, as Plato recommended. We can, I would suggest, see in the production of maps the tension between whether societies regard the world as more or less ordered, and whether we follow inductive or deductive methods. Let us consider how geographers have constructed their understanding and consequently represented the whole earth. Perhaps one of the overriding myths of popular science is that until Christopher Columbus sailed to America (and more importantly sailed back again) people believed the world to be flat. In fact Phoenician and Greek expeditions around Libya (Africa) had discovered at least 600 years BC that at a certain point the sun was on the right-hand side of the ship. Aristotle added this information to his observation that during an eclipse when the shadow of the earth crosses the moon the edge of the shadow is curved. From an inductive standpoint the whole earth was round. Deductively too, a round earth seemed logical. Pythagoras (sixth century BC) had merged mathematical law and the Greek belief in harmony (which held that the most perfect shape was a sphere) to conclude that the earth must be round, a view that was supported by Plato a century later. Neither induction nor deduction, however, came to a sufficiently robust view to counter the belief that the (round) earth was not at the centre of the universe.3 Columbus, then, was well aware that the world was round(ish).4 He had studied using the foremost maps of the age produced from Ptolemys eight-volume Guide to Geography put together in the second century AD and which divided the earth into 360 degree parts with known places given co-ordinates based on judgments made in maps and diaries of travellers.5 For Columbus, the real questions were how round and what size was the earth. Consider a problem for Columbus and sailors of his era how to calculate the shortest distance between two points. On a map this would appear as a straight line, but experience told them that if a sailor set off on a single bearing they would not arrive at the expected destination. While in general terms, sailors had Ptolemys grid (graticule) and knew that calculating latitude and longitude at sea involved calculating speed, aspect to the sun (or stars), and having a reliable method of timekeeping (not achieved until 1761). Moreover, drawing relative distance from a map was difficult as most countries used different gauges of measurement. The standard meter, for example, was adopted only gradually by the French from 1791 as 110,000,000 of the meridian from equator to pole passing through Paris. Different countries used not only different units of measurement but different meridian lines: the foremost navigators of the fifteenth century were the Portuguese (Columbus studied at the Institute at Sagres) who used both Madeira and the Canary Islands as meridian points. Not until 1884

Richard Hartshorne observed in

1959 that the exclusion of celestial space from geography is of recent origin. As late as the mid-nineteenth century Alexander von Humboldt's five volume
Kosmos (184562), a key text in

the evolution of the discipline, included a volume on the earth as celestial space.
4

Columbus thought the earth

was pear-shaped and that one had to climb toward the equator: not an illogical observation as Newton had argued that the earth was not a pure sphere but had flatter poles, and satellites would later show a squashed earth with a bulge beneath the equator.
5

Ptolemy presented an image of

the world from the standpoint of an observer beyond the globe, a figure often depicted as Apollo as in the 1570 Teatrum Orbis
Terrarum designed by Abraham

Ortelius; or an 'eye' as suggested by Albert Durer's illustration that also marked lines of sight to the earth's axis.

17

09 Human geography

when a conference in Washington decided that Greenwich (London) should be the prime meridian among the 15 different meridians recorded in Europe and the Americas did the matter appear to be resolved.6 For Columbus, however, not being able to know the distance from a known point taking into account the curvature of the earth meant that the further one travelled (east) from the meridian the greater the error of distance.7 Thus, while Columbus had read the story of Marco Polo, and must therefore have got a sense of the distance from Europe to China, books and maps produced with the caveats noted above suggested that China could be no more than 3,000 miles west of the Canaries.8 Columbus undertook four voyages to the Americas (14921504) believing that he was discovering the seaboard of China. Deductively he appeared to be right: a landform (albeit Central America) appeared where theory said it would be. There was inductive evidence too: encountering the Gulf Stream along the coast of Central America Columbus believed that he was close to a sea passage that would take him into the Indian Ocean (from China). Hearing reports of gold he headed southwest to what he thought was the direction of India in the belief that gold was created by the heat of the sun nearer to the Equator. As Columbus (allegedly until his death) believed that he had found China, his name is only tangentially credited to the continent (Colombia/Columbia/Colon) named after Amerigo Vespucci who, realising that America was not China, claimed the eastern seaboard of South America for Portugal in 1502 (Columbus died in 1506). We use the term America, however, thanks to the mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller who used it in 1507, and the name has stuck. The problems of mapping relative distance were only resolved in 1569 by Gerhard Kremer, better known as Mercator. In 1538, Mercator had made his first world map by adapting the principles used by Martin Behaim who devised the first globe in 1490. Producing globes revealed that when folded out onto a flat surface the lines of latitude/longitude (graticule) were curved. By 1569 Mercator devised a radical method of indicating geographical relations instead of stretching the graticule over an outline of landforms the 1569 map straightened the graticule back into a grid and distorted the landforms to fit beneath. Activity 1.1 If you are able to access the Internet, visit the following website link which shows you versions of different maps using the mercator projection. Dont worry about understanding the maths! http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel/m103/mercator/mercator.html (Link checked February 2009.) The technique is called projection and remains the basis for maps today. It worked by stretching the lines of latitude in proportion to the meridians as one moves toward the poles (making the poles appear larger than in reality). Navigators could now work in straight lines! The only difficulty is that the straight lines are no longer true compass bearings, meaning that a set of trigonometric tables had to be devised to translate the principle into 9 practice in ways that could be used by sailors. This only took until 1630! From knowing that the earth was round from almost 1,000 BC, therefore, it took almost 1,600 years to be able to represent the earth in its approximate dimensions in a form that could be usefully understood. In an abstract sense, therefore, people and geographers in particular could now see the whole earth: notwithstanding debates about whether Mercators projection exaggerated the Northern hemisphere at the expense of the Equator-South.

Not until the 1950s was

Greenwich adopted by all principal countries: Germany in the 1930s used Berlin as the meridian.
7

Even when triangulation

allowed fairly accurate estimates over short distances, positioning locations on the earth was impossible without a means of measuring longitude. The Portuguese calculated the distance between Lisbon and the Guinea coast (near present-day Conakry) but recorded Guinea incorrectly when it is 4 33' west of longitude at Lisbon which they thought to be 40 15'N (following Ptolemy) when it is actually 38 42'N.
8

The principal culprit is Cardinal

Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, itself based on the maps presented by Ptolemy.

Scientific advancement also

came at the price of reduced functionality in other ways. In order to stretch landforms to the grid Mercator used only approximate dimensions, thus losing accuracy of coastal features at a time when the principal aim of exploration was coastal mapping.

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Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

The representation of the earth remained in the eye of the beholder, or more precisely the objective (or Cartesian) eye of the cartographer from his celestial vantage (or Archimedean) point. It was not until 5.33 EST on 7 December 1972 that a photograph (AS17-148-22727) taken from Apollo 17 on its journey to the moon captured the whole earth (Figure 1.2). Despite its almost accidental nature and limited early diffusion by NASA, photograph 22727 became a universally popular image endlessly reproduced on postcards, lapel buttons, flags, calendars, political manifestos, commercial advertisements, and tee-shirts (Cosgrove, 1994, p.276). To Cosgrove, photograph 22727: drew upon and constituted a repertoire of sacred and secular, colonial and imperial meanings, and that these representations have played an especially significant role in the selfrepresentation of the post-war United States and its geo-cultural mission (1994, p.270). The image sets a familiar earth against a black void of space (echoes of Greek philosophy) and the cloud swirls give the idea of movement. The sense of vulnerability was an immediate symbol to the emerging green movements of the 1970s (Friends of the Earth, Gaia) while the wholeness was picked up by the media to signify an organisations global reach and planetary connectivity (McHaffie, 1997). As Cosgrove indicates, photograph 22727 challenges the Western understanding of the earth as depicted in maps for centuries. The photograph records the earth at its true relative scale and thus addresses the imbalance of the Southern hemisphere compared with the exaggerated North in the Mercator (and other) projections. Indeed photograph 22727 does not show Europe or North America and there are no names superimposed to guide the viewer to which parts of the earth are worthy of name. The clearest features on photograph 22727 are the Red Sea-Arabian Peninsula and SE Asia that may have been especially timely given US geopolitical concerns at the time. Yet photograph 22727 also reaffirmed the

Figure 1.2: AS17-148-22727 Apollo 17 view of the earth (Source: www.nasa.gov reproduced with permission)

19

09 Human geography

geopolitical mission of the US during the 1960s and 1970s, the astronaut becoming the mapmaker or photographer of earlier times, the association with Apollo, of judeo-christianity and of peace/harmony, representations reinforced by poetry and film that incorporated the space/earth association (Cosgrove, 1994).

Sir Halford Mackinders The Pivot of History

Sir Halford Mackinder (18611947) was a key figure in the emergence of geography as a recognised discipline in the university system through a distinguished career that marks him as an intellectual of statecraft (OTuathail, 1996). Mackinder became the first white man to climb Mount Kenya (1899) and was a leading academic involved with founding the University of Reading (1892), the School of Geography at Oxford (1899), and becoming Director of the London School of Economics (19031908). Later, Mackinder became a Member of Parliament for the Liberal Unionist party from 1910 to 1922, British Commissioner to South Russia (19191920) and Chair of the Imperial Shipping Committee 19201939 (Sloan, 1999). One of Mackinders best-known contributions to geography is a lecture that he gave to the Royal Geographical Society in 1904, and which was subsequently published. The title was The Geographical Pivot of History. Conceptually the paper was based on Ratzels idea of the state as an organism (see Chapter 5) and the perceived contest between land and sea power taken from the work of US Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (18401914) that proposed naval power would predominate for countries with a seaboard, large populations and strong national character. Without acknowledging these influences, Mackinder applied these concepts to the conditions of a particular moment that he called The Columbian Epoch (14921900), during which the age of discovery that was marked by European discovery of vacant lands had ended and the age of empire (beginning 1875) had an uncertain future. With no more discoveries to be made Mackinder argued that we had entered a closed system to which geography should respond by taking a world view; geographical knowledge would no longer be threatened by the possibility of another continent being found. As he put it:
Every explosion of social forces, instead of being dissipated in a surrounding circuit of unknown space and barbaric chaos, will be sharply re-echoed from the far side of the globe, and weak elements in the political and economic organism of the world will be shattered in consequence. (1904, p.161)

The task of geography was, therefore, to apply science to space in order to bring order, interpretation and prediction. The Pivot of History proposes that geopolitics is determined by the control of a Pivot region, roughly an area encompassing Central-Eastern Europe to the Near East (see Activity 1.2). The defining characteristic of the Pivot (later termed The Heartland) was a natural environment that provided both resources and defensible terrain: Eurasia would be safe from attack from the sea but forces controlling the Pivot could move outward to the sea. The impregnability of The Heartland Mackinder (1943) concluded in a later dictum meant that:
Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island [Eurasia] Who rules the World Island commands the World.

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Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

As Mackinder argued, mobility over land had been the basis to power from the Romans, the Vandals and the Cossacks until sea power took over, but railway would bring land-based power to the fore again the century will not be old before all Asia is covered in railways (1902, p.358).10 What were Mackinders motives in the construction of The Pivot and how are these concerns represented in the accompanying maps? First, we can detect in The Pivot a sense of fin de sicle decay: unlike Ratzel who regarded the organism as a metaphor to describe growth, Mackinder emphasised the literal association to states and stressed the negative connotations. To Mackinder, Britain no longer appeared to be the unassailable superpower of the age. By contrast to the Long Peace (18151914) in which most European powers avoided war with each other (the Franco-Prussian war being the most significant exception), the world seemed to contain new upstarts: in 1898 the US had defeated Spain; in 1904 Japan would beat Russia, and Germany was showing expansionist tendencies to claim territory. As he would record in The Hansard:
I firmly believe without any sense of panic that the German nation is forced to contemplate the invasion of this country because in no other way is it possible for her to remove the threat which would throttle her on the way to the oceans of the world. (Hansard, 1912)

10

Note how Mackinder sweeps

aside the history of the Heartland region which had been conquered by the Mongols, Arabs, Turks, Persians, Swedes, French and Germans, without anyone being able to retain its control; or using the area as a stepping-off point to further sustained expansion.

One consequence of these new conflicts was the realisation that Britain was unable to wage a land war at a distance: a sense ably demonstrated by difficulties during the Anglo-Boer/South Africa War (18991902). Second, Mackinder appears concerned by Britains decadence in terms of industry, trade and national purpose. During the 1880s Britains GDP rose 30 per cent, but German GDP increased 60 per cent and the US by 90 per cent. Britain seemed to be weakened by its belief in free trade whereas Germany and the US hid behind walls of protectionism and by its paternal attitude to Empire. This sense of national decline extended to the British people, the decadence of youth and moves to extend suffrage. As he would comment in 1942, referring back to 1914, [that Britain had] a million men of military age classified as unfit for military service constitutes a symptom which almost makes one thank God that the war came when it did. Geography as part of an education through action that saw Mackinder give support to, for example, the promotion of Boy Scouts from 1908 that was a direct consequence of the Anglo-Boer/South Africa War as a means to toughen the nation (OTuathail, 1996). The Pivot of History is deployed as a device for Britain to appreciate its position in the world. To Mackinder, the localism at the core of British identity, or as he put it the exceptional brain [of men] is serving the nation best if it remains racy of its own soil did not discount that this soil included the Empire. The Pivot demonstrates that Britain would be victim to the emergence of land-based power, unless it could reassert its position as a maritime power, and for that it would have to cement its relations to the Empire. Mackinder was acutely aware that the relationship between Britain and Empire was in close tension. From 1870 to 1910, over 10 million people had left Britain to live (mostly) in parts of the Empire, and Britain had also invested heavily in the colonies so that by 1910, 30 per cent of British wealth was located abroad. Mackinders suggestion was that Britains role was to do the thinking of Empire (1902) and develop the colonies until such time as the daughter nations shall have grown to maturity. He advocated the formation of an Imperial Parliament behind protectionist

21

09 Human geography

trade barriers. In a world of fixed space, but in which states needed to grow in order to survive, Mackinders Pivot claimed to show the dynamics that needed to be understood for Britain to hold on to the status quo. Activity 1.2 All External students have access to the University of London Online library. Once you have registered to use it, search in the JSTOR collection for the journal called The Geographical Journal and within that for an article entitled The Geographical Pivot of History. You will be able to read the whole article, but the diagram that we refer to here particularly, and which we encourage you to look at, is on p.435. Using the Online library is an important study skill and I will direct you to a large number of useful and interesting articles in the Further reading for each chapter. Mackinder uses the maps in his article as visual support for his argument. While the maps are presented as factual depictions of the processes he was describing, we can see them as crude constructions of his ideology. In 1904, decoding the meaning of the maps is left to the beholder the facts would speak for themselves whereas Sloan (1999) notes that in later versions of the paper Mackinder was more prescriptive. Although Mackinder claimed that his geography presented a world view, the maps (and text) present the world from an exclusively European perspective and from the UK outwards. Whole swathes of the globe are ignored, not least Africa which, if power were determined by resources and defensive capabilities, would be a competitor to Eurasia. Indeed, while expressing his concern for the TransSiberian railway shifting the Pivot to Russia, Mackinder omits that British East Africa possessed more rail capacity. Nor does Mackinder pay much attention to the United States which he regards as a power in the East (Panama Canal 190414, acquisition Philippines, Hawaii). Although the Americas appear twice on the 1904 maps, the deceit allows Mackinder to position the UK at the centre of the world rather than at an Outer Crescent. While the aim of the 1904 paper was to make a geographical formula into which you could fit any political balance Mackinder constantly manipulated the size of the Pivot-Heartland and which nations he believed were capable of controlling it. In a revision of the paper, Mackinder moved the Heartland east to include the Yenesi River, and renamed it the Lenaland. This was a rhetorical device reflecting his fear that JapanChina might ally with Russia, and lead him to propose the Midland Ocean Alliance (a predictor of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) in 1924 as a single community of nations between the Volga and the Rockies. We will return to Mackinders legacy in Chapter 5.

The London Underground

The London Underground (or Tube) moves approximately three million people each day. The map that helps people decide their best journey is one of the most widely recognised in the world, not only in practical terms but reproduced as artwork on t-shirts, posters and mugs, and the subject of academic enquiry (Hadlaw, 2003). The Tube map has become part of a Londoners toolkit for everyday living and, even, of city identity. Yet while obviously a practical contribution to mass transit, the map can be understood at a number of other levels. Designed in 1933 by Harry Beck the map is based on an electrical circuit board. Initially, London Transport rejected the design as not being geographical, to which Beck is alleged to have responded: If youre going underground, why do you need bother

22

Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

Figure 1.3: Map of the London Underground (Source: Transport for London) about geography? Its not so important. Connections are the thing. Like an electrical diagram there is no superfluous explanation; instead colour, letters and a variety of symbols convey information. The principal exception is the River Thames across the centre of the map, although it too is highly stylised and serves only as an imaginary reference point. In virtually every sense, the London Tube map breaks all the rules that a teacher of geography would tell students that a good map should conform to. There is no North, no scale and to aid practical use Beck enlarged the central areas and compressed the outer ones. Distance between stations is neither consistent nor proportionate to real distance. Thus, for a device designed to aid the planning of journeys, it can be confusing to discover that the travel time between Waterloo and Kennington is not 10 times longer than the subsequent Kennington to The Oval as it appears on the map. At the other extreme, some of the distances between stations seem further on the map than they are on the ground. Londoners delight at seeing tourists using the map to travel from Covent Garden to Leicester Square (one stop on the Piccadilly Line) when the distance between the two is less than 200 metres and it would be quicker to walk. The activity below directs you to a website which shows how a map of the London Underground should appear drawn to scale and with direction of the rail lines accurate to the routes on/under the ground. A different look at the Tube is taken by Simon Paterson for his work The Great Bear at The Tate (see web searching activity below). Paterson uses the standard format adopted by Beck but replaces the station names with philosophers, comedians and footballers. Paterson is therefore overlaying one icon, the Underground map, with a series of other icons from popular culture. The question is whether, in the longer term, it would matter were this map to be adopted. I quite like the idea of returning home via Gina Lollobrigida, Titian and Columbus. How long might it take for these names to become accepted?

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Activity 1.3 Use the internet to access: 1. A proportional London Underground Map at: www.thoughtsonthings.com/archives/2002/08/geographically.php Link last checked February 2009 2. The Great Bear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Bear See The Great Bear (detail) in the External Links section of the entry to view a small portion of this map.

Maps and geographical warfare

There has long been a close association between the history of geography and demands from the military for geographical information (see Chapter 2). It should be no surprise therefore that the writing of maps is often predicated on the conditions of war. Military forces uses maps to know the terrain, a fact noted by Sun Tzu in the sixth century BC in The Art of War (reprinted 1963, Oxford University Press). Mapping, however, may also be a prelude to changing the terrain in order to execute war. The most famous example is the bombing of irrigation dikes in Vietnam by the US during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The tactic was to modify the terrain so as to deprive the Viet Cong of the food to sustain a guerrilla war, perhaps hoping that by denying terrain in this manner the war would be fought in more conventional means where the US could deploy its superior technology and trained forces. The tactic was mapped by French professor of geography Yves Lacoste and disseminated in his paper La Gographie, a est, dabord, faire la guerre!11 Lacoste showed that geographical information collected on the Red River region of Vietnam was being used to direct the bombing. Lacoste had visited Vietnam in 1972 as a member of the International Commission of Inquiry into War Crimes, but his motives were also to oppose the apoliticisation of geography in France (compared to Sociology) and for the public to regain the awareness that the map is fundamentally an instrument of power (Lacoste, 1973, p.245; also O Tuathail, 1996, pp.16068). In looking at US military activity in Vietnam, Lacoste claims that For the first time in history, the modification and destruction of the geographical milieu (in both its physical and human aspects) is being used to obliterate those very geographical conditions which are indispensable for the lives of several million people (p.246). As such, Lacoste may be overstating the case, as either scorched earth policies or the place annihilation of city bombing at other times and places would indicate (Hewitt, 1983). Nevertheless, with the caveat that he cannot prove that geographers participated in the choice of bombing sites he argues, those who did design the strategy and tactics of bombing, demonstrated a powerful mastery of geographical information (pp.246247). The study then develops to show that the mapping of the bomb drops corresponds to a policy of destroying the 2,500 miles of dikes at their most vulnerable points and at points where the largest impact would occur on the surrounding area, sapping local labour in post-bombing maintenance. Lacostes data, put together by a team from the Ministry of Hydraulics of the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (and corroborated during the two-week field visit, which included site visits to 10 specific bombed locations), reveals a concentration of targets to the East of the Delta. US government claims, that bombing focused on military targets (such as roads on the dikes) or that the West would have been better to cause

11

I refer you to Lacostes original

paper in Antipode, although my quotes are drawn from a later version in Peets Radical
Geography (1977).

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Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

Figure 1.4: Bombing points, MayAugust 1972 (Source: Lacoste, 1977, p.253) flooding had that been the intention, are contested. Lacoste shows that to the East, few dikes possess road networks or are near potential targets, unlike dikes to the West (near Hanoi) where dikes are the bases to roads. He goes on to argue that because the Red River deposits more alluvium upstream, villages are located on former levee banks, whereas downstream no such banks are available and villages are below water level on the plain. Moreover, he notes the bombing has tended to hit the concave side of a curved dike where the water pressure is highest, and repair work most difficult to conduct, a feat made more difficult by use of 21-day timedelay bombs. In more detail, maps show that the bombing targeted locations where dike failure would have the maximum flood impact. Lacostes maps lent support to the anti-war protestor belief that the Johnson and Nixon administrations had deliberately aimed ordinance to cause collateral damage and civilian deaths. To Lacoste the rice crops of the Red River and a population of up to two million people were prevented from drowning only by an unusually low rainfall in 1972.

Eclectic atlases
Stefano Boeri is an Italian architect who leads a research network called Multiplicity, among whose projects are studies of The Uncertain States of Europe and the formation of Eclectic Atlases. Boeris maps originate from a paradox in how we understand contemporary European cities. He observes a

25

09 Human geography

superabundance of data (especially with satellite technology) that reveals more about the form of our cities, but through which Boeri realised that the images and language used to represent the geography of our territory had become useless. It was no longer possible to distinguish between centre and suburbs, interior and exterior, city and country, public and private space. Whereas urban theory and policy describe relatively ordered cities, the images show fragmented sprawling shapes with few discernable boundaries, made up of bits in the form of business parks, airports, interchanges, estates, malls, garages, etc. More widely he observes that the difficulty of pinning down a European identity is matched by difficulties in the geographic representation of Europe: geopolitical and economic changes provide chaos and organisation, the increasingly weak borders courtesy of communication, trade, cultural flows are only partly countered by new ways to organise space such as investment hot/cold spots (that he names the Blue Banana or Alpine Redoubt) to which neither Europe as a whole nor local people hold attachments. Boeri believes that, while we can see spatial change today in real time and three-dimensions, we have no language to describe the inharmonious, complex muddle before us. Boeri argues that old ways of mapping and writing about the city, what he calls a zenith paradigm the view from a distance (and above) is incompatible with the rules that we invoke to account for what lies under space (the economy, society, polity). Boeri asks whether we can grasp the essence of inhabited space by layering representations on top of one another, with no energy between them; or does this just produce thematic maps crammed with useless and highly ordered information? Instead he proposes an experimental array of plural views of the city from many different angles simultaneously, using a mix of media from photography, drawing, reports, as well as information from a variety of vernacular sources. Boeri uses the example of rubbish deposited in a Belgrade square to intimate the vibrancy of the city economy. The Eclectic Atlases construct ways of describing space in networked, fluid and contingent worlds that mark out ever more complicated patterns on the surface of the earth, and which incorporate processes such as geopolitics, travel, climate change and economy as related processes rather than as separate and ordered ones. Boeris Atlases combine the visual and the discursive, to find a new vocabulary atlases that seek new logical relationships between special elements, the words and mental images we use to identify them. He calls these alternative maps dispositifs meaning devices to describe a tangled spatio-temporal multiplicity or an ensemble of lines that follow many directions, break up, change direction, drift about. Boeri argues that past urban space formed itself through a minimal arrangement of discourses. He uses the example of the courtyard house that existed as a set of rules to organise space. Today we witness a mixture of discourses that are vague such as utterances, noises or imperatives that we need to understand in order to see how they form groupings or pragmatic inventions.

Concluding comment
Some Geographers get very excited and some quite angry by errors in maps or peoples inability to use maps properly. My preference is not to become overly concerned by accuracy, although this is important on many occasions, but to note that the power of maps (and geographical imaginations generally) extend beyond the lines on the page or, increasingly, the computer screen. Think for a moment about the author Bruce Chatwins

26

Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

account of meeting a Welsh woman in Patagonia, Argentina. Having talked over tea about her home in Caernarfon, Wales, Chatwin asks if she can locate Caernarfon on a map. Not really, came the reply, You cant expect much when its printed on a tea-towel (In Patagonia, Picador). Activity 1.4 Over the course of one week, how many maps or images of the globe can you locate? What are these maps trying to tell you? Is it possible to interpret them all? What information do they include and what do they ignore? In what ways are the maps or globes realistic? It may be useful to collect newspapers, magazines, catalogues, etc. for the week, but do also remember that maps and globes are used in television programmes, advertisements, in shopping malls and in department stores.

A reminder of your learning outcomes

By the end of this chapter, and the relevant reading and activities, you should be able to: critically understand the role of maps/images in the formation of geography as a discipline appreciate the different ways in which we are able to understand the representation of spatial processes through maps and images of the globe.

Sample examination question

With reference to at least two examples, explain how maps reflect the beliefs of the people who draw them.

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09 Human geography

Notes

28

Chapter 2: The history of geographical ideas

Chapter 2: The history of geographical ideas

Essential reading
Cloke, P Self-Other, in Cloke, P et al. Introducing Human Geographies. (Hodder . . Arnold, 2005). Driver, F Imaginative geographies, in Cloke, P et al. Introducing Human . . Geographies. (Hodder Arnold, 2005). Gilbert, D. Science-Art, in Cloke, P et al. Introducing Human Geographies. . (Hodder Arnold, 2005). Jackson, P Identities, in Cloke, P et al. Introducing Human Geographies. (Hodder . . Arnold, 2005). McDowall, L. Understanding Diversity: the problem of/for theory, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Blackwell, 2002) second edition. Parr, H. Emotional Geographies, in Cloke, P et al. Introducing Human . Geographies. (Hodder Arnold, 2005). Pratt, G. MasculinityFemininity, in Cloke, P et al. Introducing Human . Geographies. (Hodder Arnold, 2005). Smith, S.J. Societyspace, in Cloke, P et al. Introducing Human Geographies. . (Hodder Arnold, 2005).

Further reading
Agnew, J., A. Rogers and D. Livingstone (eds) Human Geography: An Essential Anthology. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). Arnold, D. Illusory Riches: Representations of the Tropical World, 18401950, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 21(1) 2000, pp.618. Barnes, T. The rise (and decline) of American regional science: lessons for the new economic geography?, Journal of Economic Geography, (4) 2004, pp.10729. Bell, M., R. Butlin and M. Heffernan (eds) Geography and imperialism 18201940. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). Bonnett, A. Geography as the world discipline: connecting popular and academic geographical imaginations, Area, 35(1) 2003, pp.5563. Chorley, R.J. and P Haggett (eds) Integrated Models in Geography. (London: . Methuen, 1969). Cloke, P C. Philo and D. Sadler Approaching Human Geography: An Introduction ., to Contemporary Theoretical Debates. (London: Paul Chapman, 1991). Driver, F Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire. (Oxford; . Malden Mass.: Blackwell, 2001). Duncan, J. and D. Ley Structural Marxism in Human Geography: a critical assessment, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (72) 1982, pp.3059. Entrikin, N. Contemporary Humanism in Geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (66) 1976, pp.61532. Faye, M.L., J.W. McArthur, J. Sachs and T. Snow The Challenges Facing Landlocked Developing Countries, Journal of Human Development, 5(1) 2004, pp.3168. Godlewska, A. Map, Text, and Image. The Mentality of Enlightened Conquerors: A New Look at the Description of lEgypte, Transactions of Institute of British Geographers, 20(1) 1995, pp.528. Gold, J.R. Image and environment: the decline of cognitive-behaviourialism in geography and reasons for its regeneration, Geoforum, (23) 1992, pp.23947.

29

09 Human geography Golledge, R.G. Misconceptions, misrepresentations and misunderstandings in behavioural geography, Environment and Planning A, (13) 1981, pp.13251344. Golledge, R.G. Geography and the disabled: a survey with specific reference to vision impaired and blind populations, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographer, (18) 1993, pp.6385. Golledge, R.G. and H. Timmermanns Applications of behavioural research on spatial problems I, Cognition, Progress in Human Geography, (14) 1990, pp.5799. Gregory, D. Ideology, science and human geography. (London: Hutchinson, 1978). Gregory, D. Human Agency and Human Geography, Transactions Institute of British Geographers, (6) 1981, pp.118. Gregory, D. The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004). Harvey, D. Social Justice and the City. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell c.1973). Harvey, D. The Condition of Postmodernity. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). Heffernan, M. Geography, cartography and military intelligence: the Royal Geographical Society and the First World War, Transactions Institute of British Geographers, (21) 1996, pp.504533. Kirby, A. What did you do in the War, Daddy? in Godlewska, A. and N. Smith (eds) Geography and Empire. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) pp.300315 . Kropotkin, P What geography ought to be, Nineteenth Century, (18) 1885, . pp.940956. Livingstone, D. The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). Livingstone, D. British Geography 15001900, in Johnston, R.J. and M. Williams (eds) A Century of British Geography. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Lynch, K. The Image of the City. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960) [ISBN 0262620014]. Massey, D. Flexible sexism, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (9) 1991, pp.3157. Massey, D. For Space. (Los Angeles; London: Sage, 2004). McDowell, L. Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1999). McEwan, C. Paradise or pandemonium? West African landscapes in the travel accounts of Victorian women, Journal of Historical Geography, 22(1) 1996, pp.6883. Peet, R. Modern Geographical Thought. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). Relph, E. Humanism, phenomenology and geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (67) 1977, pp.1779. Richards, T. The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and Fantasy of Empire. (London: Verso, 1993) [ISBN 0860914003; 9780860914006]. Rose, G. Feminism and Geography: The Limits to Geographical Knowledge. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993). Schaefer, F Exceptionalism in Geography: a methodological examination, .K. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (43) 1953, pp.22649. Smith, N. The endgame of globalisation, Political Geography, 25(6) 2006, pp.114. Soja, E. Postmodern Geography. (Verso, 1989) [ISBN 9780860919360]. Stoddart, D.R. To claim the high ground: geography for the end of the century, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, (12) 1987, pp.32736. Thrift, N. The future of geography, Geoforum, (33) 2002, pp.29198. Tuan, Y.F Humanistic Geography, Annals of the Association of American . Geographers, (66) 1976, pp.26676.

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Chapter 2: The history of geographical ideas

Aims of the chapter

Although most of the Essential reading deals with contemporary geographical enquiry, it is important to understand the origins and shifts in geographical ideas. This chapter, then, provides a brief survey of how geography arrived at its present state of the art. It notes the major theoretical developments and some of the controversies. It aims to provide the reader with sufficient guidance to understand both the depth and breadth of the discipline, and it seeks to motivate students to follow up on the key themes and names that have contributed to where we are now. Of necessity, the chapter is selective in which issues and people are mentioned, and provides signposts rather than a comprehensive discussion of key points. The history is also Anglo-American centric.

Learning outcomes
By the end of the chapter and relevant reading, you should be able to: appreciate the broad historical development of geography as a discipline understand how geography has emerged within the human and social sciences note the major debates that contribute, to or undermine, particular perspectives on geography.

Introduction
Since the nineteenth century, geography has constantly had to reinvent itself as a discipline. A critique of geographys history and its present condition is a sign of a healthy, if seemingly uncertain, subject. Occasionally these critiques provoke or reflect revolutions or paradigm shifts (to use Kuhns famous phrase). At other times, they reflect geographys origins as a diverse discipline that borrows from others and is therefore seen by many as lacking an intellectual core around which geographers can attain some level of consensus. Yet, coming to terms with the development of geography is important. Bonnett (2003) has noted recently that geography has suffered from a denial about its past; notably that its world vision was associated with Empire. It has since placed a greater distance between itself as a university study and what Bonnett calls popular geography. Historically, this popular geography involved travel accounts, paintings, museum exhibitions; today perhaps it is epitomised by National Geographic, Geographical Magazine and The Discovery Channel. Bonnett argues that if our purpose is to inform, challenge and conceptually re-wire peoples understanding of the world (2003, p.56) then geography must deal with its past and look outward, engaging with popular geography in the process. Academic geography has not only distanced itself from popular geography but has also become divided within. Most obviously this division is between human and physical geography, a split of the past 40 years, and between geographers using quantitative or qualitative techniques; a division of the past 20 or so years (see Chapter 3). It has also been divided into the numerous sub-fields of economic, political, developmental, medical, demographic, cultural, historical and environmental geographies. As Stoddart (1987) warned in a controversial article:
The walls have been built between us, and too many of us devote our time to despising the intellectual validity of what our colleagues are concerned with. (1987, p.327)

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Many will think that Stoddart was no innocent: in attempting to be nonprescriptive about what geography should be, he lays the blame for any shortcomings at the door of human geographers. His argument was that geography should ask the big questions, about man, land, resources, human potential and to claim the high ground back: to tackle the real problems: to take the broader view: to speak out across our subject boundaries on the great issues of the day (1987, p.334). He admitted that geographers could no longer be polymaths, that specialisation was necessary, but geography needed to reconnect human and physical geography, and ignore research subjects like geographic influences in the Canadian cinema, or the distribution of fast-food outlets in Tel Aviv (p.334). If, in 1987 Stoddart felt angry by the shift to cultural geography, the influence of social theory and the focus on locality, then over the next 20 years he must have become exasperated. However, whether such sentiment is necessary or helpful, I very much doubt. Geography is big enough and dynamic enough to deal with questions large and small (if such a distinction holds), and as bombs go off in Tel Aviv shopping precincts, it seems difficult to draw lines around the local, regional and global, and determine where the relevance lies. In thinking about this chapter and the associated reading you might want to consider whether geographys flexibility is a vice or a virtue, and whether or how far it is possible for the discipline to ask the big questions and accommodate what Stoddart would consider to be the minutiae. For one view on where geography is going see Thrift (2002), and for excellent summaries of the history of geographical ideas see Agnew et al. (1996), Cloke et al. (1991) and Peet (1998).

War and Empire

We should recognise that geography, as with many other disciplines, has a dark history. Most obviously, geography and geographers have been linked to the conduct of Empire, colonialism and warfare. A forerunner to modern geography in the United Kingdom was the Depot of Military Knowledge that operated through the Napoleonic Wars to collect maps of foreign places to aid in their capture and subsequent government. Through various metamorphoses the Depot became MI5 (military intelligence). Numerous leading geographers were also military figures, most famous in the UK case being (Colonel) Sir Thomas Holdich whose maps of IndiaTibet (189298) were premised on the military defence of North India with as few men as possible (Heffernan, 1996; Livingstone, 1992). Elsewhere, notably in France and Germany, geography emerged in allegiance with military training schools, an influence that means many geographical institutes are operated by the military in countries with institutions based on the German or French systems. Finally, the experience of the US negotiators at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 convinced the government to establish the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to serve as an intelligence gathering think tank shifting the emphasis from geographys collection of raw (data) to cooked (interpretation) (Kirby, 1994). Leading geographers such as Richard Hartshorne and Isaiah Bowman were attached to the OSS which later became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Geography also played a vital role in the acquisition and conduct of Empire and colonialism. Ann Godlewska (1995) has argued that geographers were the soldiers of modernity providing imperialists with their tools; it provided the map of what was to be divided and managed. At the 1884 Berlin Conference to divide up Africa, geography was prominent. Up to that point, Britain, France, Germany and Portugal had acquired empires according to, at best, a commercial rationale or as Sir John Seeley had put it in a fit of

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absence of mind. Geographers were able to inform leaders of where resources could be located, accessible routes, passive peoples and amenable climates. This knowledge also filtered back home, in various ways; through the numerous geographical societies that sprung up across Europe, North and South America, and the various empire lands. In 1830 the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) was formed from the wonderfully, but appropriately, named Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa (formed 1788) and the Palestine Association. The Socit de Gographie was formed in 1821, the Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde zu Berlin in 1828, the Russian Geographical Society in 1845, the American Geographical Society in 1851 and the National Geographic Society in 1888. Geography and empire was also institutionalised through professional training for the civil service and, in the UK, through a revised national curriculum (1914) that the Geographical Association insisted included Empire as a subject in its own right (Heffernan, 1996).1 Geography is also implicated in the display of Empire, creating a popular history of places. As Driver (2001) argues, geographers were frequently deployed to pull together and interpret the mysteries of the earth from the fragmentary information and objects brought back by explorers, travellers, civil servants, military officers and scientific expeditions. What Richards (1993) calls the Imperial Archive was akin to todays information technology; a series of exhibitions, conventions and museums, that organise, delete and interpret objects turning them into knowledge. We might note that the RGS in London is located on Exhibition Row, but other sites of exhibition fill the landscape from Rome, Paris, Berlin, Chicago, New York and beyond. In London, examples include the Natural History Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Kew Gardens, the British Museum, London Zoo, as well as the now lost Crystal Palace and White City at Wembley. Elsewhere, even more fantastical methods of display were proposed. Foremost was the Great Globe of lise Reclus. At a talk to the Royal Geographical Society on 27 June 1898, Reclus mulled over the inadequacies of maps compared to a curved earth, and a problem of scale for producing a globe with relief that one to 10 million at a circumference of six to 12 feet would show the Himalayas as 1/25 inch high. His proposition was a Great Globe at one to 100,000 such that mountains and even hills would be discernible, hollow with stairs so that visitors could walk around from outside and from within. Reclus hoped that The Globe, which was built for the Paris Exposition Universelle (1900), would induce respect for the earth and for each other as seeing the globe could be made possible without any privilege for race or nationality. I want to capture through a brief biopic of Reclus the character of a geographer at this time. Geography was an unformed discipline and geographers were malleable, often polymaths, who analysed the relations between man and earth in the very broadest sense, combining what we would today consider to be human and physical geography. Reclus, for example, is best known for two key publications, the 18,000 page Nouvelle Gographie Universelle and the 3,500 page L Homme et la Terre. These books attempted to bring together a set of ideas that draw from geography, history, philosophy, religion, anthropology and politics, above all proposing a set of interactions between the social, the political and the ecological. While keen to map these connections in what we might term political ecology today, Reclus also wanted to show the need to transform social and political relations, especially racism and patriarchy, and not least through anarchism for which he was imprisoned and then expelled from France, as well as for his communitarian living, his anti-marriage stance and his vegetarianism.

Excellent discussions of

geography's association with Empire are found in Bell et al. (1995), Driver (2001), Heffernan (1996) and Livingstone (1992).

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Popular geography
Reclus was probably not widely read but the various displays of popular geography as well as the accounts of explorers, artists, surveyors, missionaries and travellers were consumed in vast quantity. Travel writing is perhaps the most popular geography. The RGS produced a range of books on how to travel, including Hints to Travellers in 1854, the many Migration Societies published How to handbooks and the accounts themselves represented about 10 per cent of titles in the libraries of England, Germany and the US. Most travellers were upper middle class, male, white, of private wealth, and few spoke indigenous languages. Some were, or had, aspirations to become scientists, Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin being the most famous examples, but some were outsiders from the Academy, especially women. These amateurs were denied public speaking roles because of their gender, but some such as the best-selling Mary Kingsley, were also working class (McEwan, 1996). Travel, as Carlos Fuentes once remarked of the English in particular, meant freedom and adventure even in the guise of science; it was life with the tea cosy pulled off and a dash of rum added. The output of travellers such as Sir Richard Burton, famous for adapting The Arabian Knights and the more prosaic Explorations of the Highlands of Brazil, were widely anticipated. Reports of Samuel Bakers expedition to discover the source of the Nile in 1862 kept much of Europe on the edge of its seat. Texts were often well illustrated with sketches, technical drawing and later photographs. The visual was vital to the popular geographical imagination. Consider, for example, Figure 2.1 by Sir William Hodges (17441797), artist on Captain Cooks voyages to the South Seas. Typical of visual and narrative accounts, Hodges reveals a preference for the physical landscape over the human presence, a prominence given to a particular representation of nature and especially to mountains. Locals, if present at all, are additions to a picturesque landscape. Women, as here, are often scantily dressed indicating both their innocence and fertility. The reference to the totemic idol is hardly accidental; folk or historical artefacts are often shown as ruins to indicate

Figure 2.1: Sir William Hodges (17441797) Vaitepiha Bay (Tahiti) (Reproduced with the permission of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)

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societal degeneration from a past civilisation. What we would later call the developing world was seen as primitive, at one with nature, sparsely populated, available for colonisation. Indeed, travellers and their accounts frequently referred to places as undiscovered or, at least, unmapped. Unlike the competent travellerqua-geographer the locals seemed ignorant of their surroundings. When Dr Andrew Smith attempted to discover a lake in central Africa, for example, the locals kept telling him about the lake but nobody could tell him how to get to it. Eventually, only Smith with his map had the scientific tools to get there. The local people, of course, were simply unable to explain the location of the lake in the language Smith required, scientific English, although they knew perfectly well where the lake was. Few travellers, however, had the skills or desire to interact with the locals, although McEwan (1996) makes a case for Mary Kingsley and Mary Slessor, and it is held that Henry Bates and Carl von Martius also interacted with them. Generally, however, there was little need as it is nature that is dominant whereas (local) man was regarded as idle, slovenly, the human landscape monotonous, miserable, uncomfortable, beyond order and government. The exception might be a few churches of poor quality compared with Europe or the US, temples and ruins, and the bazaars with their hint of danger, social, ethnic and gendered mixing, of poverty and disease. These images, common in popular geography, became mixed with scientific knowledge and continue to be widely believed as accurate representations (incorrectly) in many sectors of society even today.

Environmental determinism
This discussion of popular geography serves to indicate how all the sciences reflect their times. In the early nineteenth-century the foremost geographer of his age, Karl von Ritter, adopted an overtly teleological view of the world: he believed that phenomena had to be understood against their higher purpose rather than their immediate antecedent.2 Nevertheless, it was this view that encouraged Ritter to drop geography as collecting summaries of facts and to think of how to understand the interrelations of man and environment, and thus to know more of Gods ultimate purpose. This process led Ritter to search for laws from the earth, considering features together within a regional focus (Landschaft) rather than taking each feature as an individual part. His 19-volume Erdkunde (geography) was an attempt to describe the harmony between man and nature. Ritter died in 1859, the year that Darwins The Origin of Species was published. The late nineteenth-century was influenced by a range of philosophical, scientific and social ideas that gained currency in geography. Perhaps the most obvious was Social Darwinism, based on the idea that people (societies) would succeed according to their natural abilities. Combined with Environmental Determinism (the argument that the physical environment produced social and cultural outcomes), Social Darwinism justified colonialism by asserting that the colonised were better than the people they colonised; although being closer to nature might be a godly virtue, it also suggested the absence of evolution and therefore, inferiority. According to Arnold:
Although describing the tropics as natures garden might seem to suggest unqualified approval, in an age obsessed with improvement and progress, with racial origins and competitive evolution, there were definite disadvantages to being the denizens of an earthly paradise. (2000, p.10)

Immanuel Kant, a German

philosopher who lectured at the University of Konigsberg had already argued in the Critique of
Pure Reason (1781) that

explanation had to be sought in what is chronologically antecedent (i.e. in cause-effect); a view that became the basis to science.

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People in the tropics, highlands and deserts or anywhere unlike Europe or the US were seen as backward, lazy, temperamental and prone to sexual ill discipline. These beliefs found an echo in science that mapped a link between race and climate (Livingstone, 1992). In what Livingstone (1992) terms an ethnic moral topography, during the latter half of the 1800s, geographers believed a link between climate, race and social pathologies was proven. In 1861, for example, John Crawford noted that temperate climates showed increased activity of the brain. Others argued that nature brought about a natural selection by herding certain races into climate zones according to ability: more able peoples moved away from the torrid zones to temperate edges (i.e. Europe) but had been careful to avoid the arctic hysteria of Siberia. If, by force of colonialism or imperialism, temperate peoples found themselves in the tropics, then geography showed through the incidence of disease, mental illness and sloth, that such a sojourn should be short, and labour should be purely administrative and not physical (Arnold, 2000; Livingstone, 1992). The scientific legitimacy for the use of labour and to the moral codes of civilised empire prudence, hygiene and discipline came from the work of US geographers in Ellsworth Huntingtons Civilisation and Climate (1915) and Character of Races (1924); and Ellen Semples Influences of the Geographic Environment (1911). Huntington started as a physical geographer but after working in Turkey on climate cycles came to believe that human movement was climatically induced. The nomadic movements into Europe and the Mongol conquests of India were, he argued, linked to the drying of pasture. He went on to draw maps of genius, energy, temper, sexual indulgence and much more. This moral demography was then compared to mortality rates, seeming to confirm that the childlike nature of Black Africa was determined by climate, made worse by culture (Cloke et al., 1991, Chapter 1; Livingstone, 1992). Semple believed that man is a product of the earths surface (1911: 1). Her work, consequently, went on to explore how far the development of man, physically and as a civilisation, was linked to environment. To some extent her ideas moved away from a racial determinism, noting for example that if many races lived in an area and displayed similar social conditions then these were determined by environment and not race. Yet, her close mapping of climate and topography with physiology held many dangers. She claimed to show, for example, that mountain people had larger leg muscles and those on the coast were more flabby but sharper of mind, while the leisure time of nomads brought them to a singular God. In another piece of work, Semple claimed that the kidneys changed with climate, thereby suggesting a physical degeneration with exposure to tropical life. Adaptation, therefore, was not to be recommended, while geographers ignored the social and economic power relations between races and nations as explanations of conditions. While a concern with structure was still many decades away, geographers did begin to reject environmental determinism while continuing to describe and catalogue the features of places. The emphasis, however, was less on the broad similarities tied to climate, race or culture, but to the distinctiveness of particular regions. An interest in the region introduces us to leading geographers such as Vidal de la Blache, Patrick Geddes, A.J. Herbertson and H.J. Fleure. In different ways each was interested in considering the unique features of regions, which Vidal argued needed to be isolated in order to better examine the complex relations between man and environment. Fleures interest was in bringing together multiple surveys from ordinance

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maps to studies of geology, fisheries, industry, archaeology, and architecture. His work on Wales, for example, looked at watersheds and suggested particular influences on manenvironment settings reflected in the styles of architecture, furniture, dialects and designs for trains. He was also fascinated by how some regions in Europe had adopted Gothic motifs on cathedrals and others had not. Regions to Fleure had a defining identity or to Vidal a genre de vie. According to one of its strongest proponents, Richard Hartshorne, the strength of Regional Geography brought together insights on the character of the biological, climatological and geological environments with the use of data on economics, population structures and settlement systems within a limited geographical area. Hartshorne was influenced by Ritter, and regarded geography as best suited to the observation of difference over space (systematic geography), and how in the sum of the parts, particular spaces become uniquely different from each other (regional geography). Hartshorne argued that geography was idiographic (as opposed to nomothetic, see below) (Cloke et al., 1991). But in the work of Herbertson (who proposed a chorology of world natural regions), Isaiah Bowman and Carl Sauer, the principles of regional study could be applied to a broader canvas and without environmental determinism. The research of Sauer at Berkeley followed a deductive approach he argued that no study should have a single causative hypothesis that would commit the researcher to an outcome in advance. Sauer was a keen field researcher but opposed the idea that research should look for specific conditions, but be open to possibility. Here Sauer demonstrated his methodological eclecticism or possibilism, although he always seemed keen to reveal the power of mapping exercises. His research focused on the origins (or hearth) and on the dissemination of particular phenomena; be that agricultural innovation, epidemics or cultural attributes. He is especially associated with bringing in historical analysis rather than deduction based on observation of the immediate environment; and of considering the impact of cultural grouping on environmental context. Sauer took more of a world view than many of his contemporaries, and was always motivated to link a particular local phenomenon to global processes and generalisation, chancing to speculate on the distant origins and the longer term and wider possibilities for dispersal. As such, much of Sauers research comes across today as imaginative but hard to pin down with data; during his life he was often critiqued as proposing untestable theories.

The quantitative revolution

By the late 1950s, geography was still mainly concerned with description, an emphasis on the region and on the merits of combining human and physical approaches. Geography was regarded as antipathetic to normative theory, the use of quantitative techniques and top specialisation. However, during the 1960s, key figures, notably at the universities of Washington and Iowa, such as Brian Berry, William Bunge and William Garrison given legitimacy by a 1963 National Academy of Sciences committee to consider the contribution of geographic research to the progress of science began to reorient geography itself to adopt a more analytical approach and to the inclusion of normative models into the research agenda. Taking a lead from a widely read article by Schaefer (1953), it was argued that geography should be a nomothetic, or law-seeking, science and as Peter Haggett demonstrated with Locational Analysis in Human Geography (1965) this

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necessitated a deductive approach based on the presentation of specific research questions followed by the careful selection of quantitative methods best suited to addressing them. An influential publication that set out the actual and potential contribution of quantitative approaches was Chorley and Haggetts Models in Geography (1969). Models in Geography retained the inclusion of human and physical geography in one volume, in two separate specialised sections and one synthesis section. Chapters stressed the role of scientific method to the study of geomorphology, hydrology, demography, economic and urban geography, with material presented in such a way as to be digested by both numerate and innumerate readers alike. Models in geography specifically, and parallel work, elevated geography to a human science; empiricism rather than observation drove field research; statistical and mathematical techniques tested theoretical models to explain spatial phenomena. From standard statistical techniques that mostly relied on linear models, geographers had to innovate in order to add a spatial or 3-D component. From the quantitative revolution we can see the emergence of gravitational models, functional areas, network and systems analyses, and diffusion models. One of the most important contributions was by Torsten Hgerstrand, working on the diffusion of information and innovations such as disease control and car ownership in Sweden. Hgerstrand observed a distancedecay pattern of migration according to town size, with innovation moving out from the largest cities to lower-order urban and rural areas according to a principle of least cost transmission. Hgerstrand arrived at his conclusions from a stochastic (random) model that simulated diffusion and was then tested against the data. In essence, his idea was common sense; but in the application of statistical techniques that were subsequently adapted for the study of the dissemination of infectious disease and for the change to plant communities, his work was methodologically seminal. While quantitative geography has appeared to wane in the past two decades, initially with the emergence of behaviouralism and structuralism, and latterly the cultural turn, its influence remains strong in economic, political and population geography. Indeed, as parts of the discipline promoted itself as a spatial or regional science, especially in the US, it believed itself to have relevance for mainstream economics. However, as Barnes (2004) has shown in a fascinating article, while spatial science may claim an objective rationale, its emergence, diffusion and decline can be explained with a sociological model. There has also been a longer-standing doubt about whether the positivist basis to quantitative geography is nomothetic; or whether rather it is a form of instrumentalism that manipulates laws and models rather than using them as explanatory devices (Gregory, 1978). With a certain irony, a further concern is that while the quantitative revolution allowed geographers to speak to new academic audiences, it made it more distant from popular geography (Bonnett, 2003). Moreover, some of the new audiences outside of the Academy, in government and in the private sector, were keen to apply spatial data modelling techniques to relevant problems. The desire to urge relevance perhaps most clearly expressed by the rise of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) again tended to make geography divorced from everyday geographical debates. In particular, the specialisation heralded by the quantitative revolution contributed to the divisions between human and physical geography; and among the human geographers into the camps of quants and quals.

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Behavioural and humanist geography

Behavioural geography was a response to some of the simplifying assumptions of quantitative geography, but also reflected the influence of (cognitive) psychology and to some degree of social policy. Behaviouralism attempts to integrate real world assumptions about human decision-making into spatial models, noting that people did not make rational decisions according to optimum criteria (utility, economic return) and did not possess perfect knowledge but rather held biased views of the world, and their attachments and knowledge of places were highly differentiated. Methodologically, behavioural geography is inductive; it looks for patterns from the context of general theory, as opposed to the deductive reason of quantitative geography. Although behavioural geography adopts quantitative techniques it is non-reductionist it does not believe in single outcomes from particular behaviours and it is anti-positivist in the sense that world and mind are in relation to one another. Rather, behavioural geography is process driven. Rather than study the pattern of particular phenomena directly, behavioural geographers examine the thoughts, knowledge and decisions that influence those phenomena (Golledge and Timmermans, 1990). Here the influence of cognitive psychology is to the fore, arguing that human action is mediated through the cognitive processing of environmental information. Individual agency rather than structural factors therefore were posited to explain human activity; a view that brought behaviouralism into conflict with structural Marxists (Golledge, 1981). Consequently, behavioural geography tends to be sceptical of large database approaches and from inferential statistics (Golledge and Timmermans, 1990). Prominent geographers using behavioural approaches were Gilbert White, David Lowenthal and Reg Golledge. Their work involved the study of perception, including the use of mental mapping, analysis decision-making, game theory and animal behaviour research. A particularly well-known piece of work emanating from behavioural techniques, although not in fact conducted by a geographer, was Kevin Lynchs (1960) use of cognitive maps to gather information on what he called peoples wayfinding through the city. This technique has been adopted especially in relation to people with disability, the visually-impaired and mental illness (see Golledge, 1993). Over time, a more positivist framework has been applied, especially with regard to the study of shopping patterns, residential mobility, industrial location decisions, migration and responses to environmental hazards, suggesting a possible comeback (Gold, 1992). The earlier decline of behavioural geography was largely because its attraction to researchers uneasy with spatial models had been undone by its adoption of models and applied techniques rather than sensitivity to a contingent sense of place and the subjectivity of human experience. This desire was met by Humanism that drew on phenomenology to suggest the uniqueness of human acts, the reassertion of narrative over numerical representations and a focus on meaning (Relph, 1977; Tuan, 1976). As explained by Entrikin, Humanism was:
a reaction against what they believe to be an overly objective, narrow, mechanistic and deterministic view of [the human being] presented in much of the contemporary research in the social sciences. Humanist geographers argue that their approach deserves the appellation humanistic, in that they study the aspects of [people] which are most distinctly human: meaning, values, goals and purposes. (1976, p.616)

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Humanists argued that there was no social reality outside of experience, which led researchers to promote a hermeneutic approach, whereby understanding is gained observationally by the researcher putting him/herself in the position of the subject. Through this positioning, the researcher is able to grasp the meaning of expressions, symbols and emotional experiences, to put man at the centre as both producer and product of the social world (life-world). Drawing on phenomenology, the life-world is here regarded as the shared individual (self) experiences that set meanings and routines that determine behaviour, giving occasion for a return to personal reflection through consciousness (Buttimer, 1976). Other Humanists pay less attention to phenomenology and focus instead on how people negotiate between the self (inner) and the realities of the real (outer) world. Writers such as David Ley suggest that a notion of place is critical to the reciprocal relationship, creating an identity of place where people work out their position in the social world. The most telling criticism of Humanism was forwarded by Gregory who recoiled from the neo-romantic visions that dress[ed] up the utterly familiar shape of its arguments in thecarefully draped silks of the Emperors tailor, offering only the exasperating interrogation of the mundane and the transparently trivial (1981, p.2). To Gregory, Humanistic geography lacked any engagement with the material structure, without which it is difficult to know to what end a subjective approach might serve. What purchase could a personal and place-based understanding of the world offer, especially to those for whom the world would appear to require change, most obviously the poor and the disadvantaged? It seemed unable to relate the world of symbols, signs and interpretation of Humanism to the non-subjective structures that dictated, to some extent, peoples position in the world. Having a theory of the self introduced the individual but it didnt promise human agency to indicate how anything outside of experience could be improved.

Radical geography, structuralism and Marxism

Enter what, collectively, is termed Radical geography, which incorporates welfare and Marxist geography; and for both of whom an oft-cited point of departure is a short paper written from a prison cell in France by the anarchist Peter Kropotkin. The essay What geography ought to be, published in 1885, argued that geography needs to further the sense of humanity, and fight against racism, war, intolerance, inequality and injustice. Kropotkin was not only interested in understanding the world but in changing it. Yet, as David Harvey once pointed out, Richard Hartshorne felt able to proclaim in the pages of The Nature of Geography (1939) that geography should avoid politics and reject the temptation to become involved in debates over aesthetics and deal only in facts. It seemed not to trouble the objective Hartshorne that he finished his book while in Vienna weeks after the Nazi Anchluss. By contrast to the behavioural geography that posited substantial room for individual human agency, Radical geography concentrated on the constraints to peoples choices, through the hegemony of capitalism and relative class position, and in some work through the thinking about power. In the view of David Smith (1977), geography should be relevant, and therefore had to address societal problems by asking: who gets what, where, why and how? and positing geographically-informed solutions. Attention to particular social groups, (identified according to class, race and ethnicity, gender, age or (dis)ability); as well as to areas that exhibited high degrees of social

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exclusion, segregation and unemployment; environmental justice and poverty was now on the research agenda. While many of these topics were addressed from an assumed objective and quantitative stance, in the context of the civil rights movements, social and race riots, liberation struggles in the developing world and the Vietnam war, becoming relevant also meant becoming political. To some extent the anger and insights of work by Smith and others that adopted a welfare-oriented stance dovetailed with the emergence of Marxism. As Harvey (1973) indicated in his benchmark Social Justice and the City, attempting to address inequality through reform of the system without changing the capitalist economic structure is doomed. Marxists consider the spatial manifestations of capitalism; how in particular does capitalism produce uneven development; and how does space constrain capitalism? Observable phenomena in society, and their geographies, were the result of unequal and exploitative factors in the underlying structure of production. Drawing on Marxs notion that each mode of production has distinct social relations (feudalism, subsistence, capitalist); which in turn is based on labour theory that explained the exploitation of labour by capital, Marxist geographers could offer an explanation of inequality. Moreover, in adopting Marxs understanding of the dialectic, as the everchanging relation between the material base (objects); and the ideological superstructure (processes); it could be argued that observable conditions are transient to one moment and place. Applied spatially, as Harvey set out in his The Limits to Capital (1982), laws are not universal over time and space, but operate within a wider framework of what he termed historicalgeographical materialism. In particular, Harvey demonstrated in Limits, and was later to explore empirically in The Urbanisation of Capital (1985), that capitalism overcame crises through spatial fix; that is, as profits fell because wages were insufficient for reproduction of labour at higher levels of consumption, capitalists decided to expand into new regions. In pursuing this point at the level of the city, Harvey observed how capital switched across circuits of capital; from production and collective consumption to the built environment. Through the work of Richard Peet and Neil Smith, geographers embraced a political economy that could bring in both an historical perspective, categories such as the state, finance capital and class, and opportunities for praxis (Peet, 1998). There is no single path from debates about Humanistic and Marxist geography to subsequent developments. However, by the mid-1980s, we witness a growing and occasionally radical interest in social theory, and especially surrounding issues of power and resistance. Foremost were feminist geographers who pointed to the androcentric nature of theory and research that assumed men as the focus of study, and to the exploitation of women not only by capitalism but also by patriarchy, the belief that represents women as subordinate to men (Rose, 1993). How could social science claim to be objective and rational if it ignored gendered interests or subsumed these within a masculinist methodology? The clash was most sharply expressed in a critique of the gendered and sexist nature of David Harveys The Condition of Postmodernity and Ed Sojas Postmodern Geographies by Doreen Massey, Gill Rose and Rosalyn Deutsche, and which subsequently motivated replies by Harvey (see Massey, 1991). More mechanically, patriarchy had consequences for wage differences, access to jobs (the famous glass ceiling), social benefits, political office and of course to particular spaces (McDowell, 1999). An interest in the gendered division

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of labour also brought domestic spaces on to the research agenda, and more recently still there has been an interest in social life, the body and in sexuality. If Marxist geography had offered valuable insights that people live under circumstances not of their own choosing, then the economic determinism of historical materialism seemed to deny human agency. This was a problem for those from a Humanistic standpoint (Duncan and Ley, 1982) and those more sympathetic to Marx (Gregory, 1981). Instead, structuration theory argued that social and spatial structures were constantly being created and recreated through human agency, which in turn responded to the constraints of structure. In what we might consider to be a sociological turn geography began to think of the relations between economy and culture, and to the relations with everyday life in more interesting ways (Cloke et al., 1991). While geographers welcomed the dialogue that both Marxism and work on structuration had opened with other social sciences, some expressed concern that the empirical underpinning to the subject was being undermined. The strength of Harveys work, for example, was its provocation and theoretical rigour, but with the exception of his studies of nineteenth-century Paris and chapters in The Urbanisation of Capital, his books were rarely held up as examples of empiricism. Harvey was interested in space (and class) while many geographers wanted to engage with place and locality, with social relations, tensions between culture and the economy, and a broader array of methodological approaches. While able to borrow from Humanistic geography, and to a degree from regional and behavioural geography; or thematically from urban and economic geography, these interests lacked a wider theoretical justification.

The Cultural Turn, post-modernism and post-structuralism

A resolution to some of these frustrations was found in an embrace of post-structuralism. Post-structuralism offered a critique of structural analyses of society, such as Marxism, and the idea of meta-narratives; arguing that meanings are contingent upon the positionality of the speaker and are determined by what is absent as much as by what is said. Geographers became interested in discourse, especially after the publication of Lyotards The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge which argued that all writing was metaphor with no intrinsic essence, that all writing expressed cultural bias and that meaning is self-referential. To Humanists and others looking to bring subjectivity back into geography, the idea that knowledge was a social construction was attractive. Already alert to the insight of personal experience through hermeneutics, the draw of post-structuralism allowed an idea of spatiality to capture the social construction of space. Similarly, although Michel Foucault was uneasy with being labelled a poststructuralist and he wrote against hermeneutics and for discourse, his work was picked up for its analysis of the uses and representations of space in the exercise of power and government. His book, Discipline and Punish published in English in 1977, building upon earlier work on the clinic, was a vital text. Geographers also became interested in the ideas surrounding post-modernism. Informed, philosophically, by post-structuralism, post-modernism has been (appropriately enough) difficult to pin down to a single thread, encompassing both a spirit, moment or epoch, an array of architectural and aesthetic styles, and a methodological critique. To Baudrillard, post-modernism represented a reversal of the world of our modernitys relation to time (1998). Indeed, in rejecting the

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meta-narrative of single truths, linear histories and the accompanying totalitarianism of modernist architecture, hierarchy and scale, postmodernism stressed quality over quantity, imagination over knowledge, transience over permanence, disorder against coherence, edges over centres, and relative over absolute space (fixed). The idea of reading off social conditions from an underlying structure of capitalism, with the consequent assumption that human subjectivity is predefined or definite was regarded as untenable. Attuned to the appreciation of discourse and drawing from cultural studies and literary critique (most obviously Frederic Jameson), post-modern geography developed a new vocabulary to talk about social process, and especially the urban. Cities were now described as fragmentary, mosaics, bricolage; and the urban experience stressed being in a maelstrom, insecurity, marginality, transgression, the permeability of spaces and of rules. From architecture and design (most obviously Charles Jencks), the meanings of urban space were interpreted as reflecting a more local, historical or hybrid cultural life in which social engineering gave way to pastiche, irony and markers to difference. Prominent post-modern architects include Ricardo Bofill, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry and Michael Graves, with a post-modern style synonymous with deconstructive techniques (buildings falling over, angled or seeming incomplete), using parody in the use of materials, colour or symbol, and accentuating a sense of spectacle and of commercial intent. Geographers came to look at building and landscape as a series of pastiches, with multiple meanings in which representation is always contingent and problematic (Dear and Flusty, 1998; Soja, 1989; see also Chapter 8 of this subject guide). As Baudrillard outlined in his Simulacra and Simulation everything was becoming advertising, superficial, performance and exhibition, everything is a copy without an original. These discussions had a profound effect on a discipline that only 30 years before had prided itself on describing real places and had undergone a revolution in order to accept quantification. Although post-modernism marks out what is new in the history of geographical ideas for the late 1980s and 1990s, many geographers found it of little value and easy to ignore. The language of post-modernism was deemed exclusionary while the rejection of being able to say anything definitive as all viewpoints were valid (and therefore deliberately relativist) seemed to abrogate political engagement with changing conditions in the real world. Post-modernism seemed apathetic or even conservative to many radicals. To geographers such as Harvey, post-modernism was a particular response to the capitalist crisis, mediated by technological change that demanded the reuse of urban space. The consumption aesthetic of postmodernism thus reflected a shift in the mode of production to flexible accumulation (see Chapter 4 of the subject guide). Where post-modernists saw a recombination of time and space marked by disorder and uncertainty, Harvey saw timespace compression as a consequence of capitalist restructuring (Harvey, 1989). In any case, as Marshall Berman (2000, p.345) argued in a revised version of his classic All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, the modern urban experience was always far more confusing, disruptive, mixed up and less rational than accounts of modernism supposed. Nevertheless, post-modernism did leave a number of impresses on the geographical academic landscape that, rather than forming a coherent whole (corpus), have acquired the (suitably post-modern) collective noun, turn. With its emphasis on culture, discourse, texts (including novels, film, diaries, artwork and the urban landscape), acuteness to difference,

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complexity, and cynicism to universal theory, it opened up possibilities for new research in cultural, historical and social geography. In particular, geographers began to think about what Massey (2004) calls the powergeometry that reveals exclusions resting within places that do not have single identities that everyone, local and global, can share. For Massey, the important thing is to understand how differences are formed relationally, as mutually constructing, but also how such differences are a prerequisite for interaction across boundaries. The interest in representation is pursued in Chapter 3 but the relation to social theory and political engagement needs to be stressed here. Cultural geography via post-structuralism has been influenced by post-colonial thinking, notably the work of Edward Said, to consider how the representations and meanings reveal how social power is spatialised. A wonderful book from this standpoint is Gregorys The Colonial Present (2004).

Afterword, afterward
After putting this chapter to bed, I read an article related to the Millennium Development Goals (see Chapter 11 of this subject guide), which is supposedly a set of practical interventions oriented to reducing global poverty. The authors build on an earlier argument by Jeffrey Sachs and John Gallup that no landlocked country can claim a high average income, and of the top 30 economies ranked by output per capita, only three are tropical. In a more recent paper the authors diagnose a series of costs associated with being landlocked: costs to trade; political stability including conflict; and an administrative burden. The final 13 pages of the paper consist of an appendix that presents maps and regional overviews that outline key challenges facing the landlocked countries in the region. Structural analysis is absent, asymmetries of trade and finance is absent, colonialism or the colonial present is absent echoes of Sauer, however, are here. The authors are trying to make big statements, for the high stakes of setting out an important development agenda. But reading the paper I couldnt help thinking how the analysis will come as a profound shock to Switzerland and Luxemburg, and Saudi Arabia might wonder what access to the sea has to do with its wealth (at least in recent geological time). Conversely, Somalia must be kicking itself not to have done more with its seaboard advantage and Puerto Rico will continue to import snow from Canada, as it has done for the past few Christmases, in the hope that it might pick up some of that non-tropical industrial ethic. Or will it? Could there be more to it? Are todays borders reflective of resource capture and of the ability to trade? Can history be so easily denied by geography? Geographers, theoretical and empirical, still have a lot to do. This chapter has presented a neat overview of the history of geographical ideas. In many ways, this history is too neat, and a chapter of at least equal length could have been written covering a range of different theory positions, personalities and research subjects. Some are covered in later chapters, especially those on economic, political and developmental geography. I also refer you to the Review Essays in Progress in 09 Human geography, as well as to the Essential and Further reading at the start of the chapter. Let me finish with a personal note. My own academic formation began with a BSc in Geography and Economics (UCL, 1985), a degree structure that omitted a narrative overview of geographical ideas and in a geography at least that was theory-light. However, the longer I have spent in academia, the more I have realised that what I know and what I dont know, what I enjoy and what I find challenging, is related to my ability to understand the history of ideas, in geography and generally.

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A reminder of your learning outcomes

By the end of the chapter and the relevant reading and activities, you should be able to: appreciate the broad historical development of geography as a discipline understand how geography has emerged within the human and social sciences note the major debates that contribute to, or undermine, particular perspectives on geography.

Sample examination questions

1. The history of geography shows a discipline that has been a follower rather than a leader in the social sciences. Discuss. 2. Geographys strength has been its ability to incorporate and adapt theoretical perspectives from elsewhere in the social sciences. With reference to examples, consider how far you agree with this statement.

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Notes

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Chapter 3: Geographical methods

Chapter 3: Geographical methods

Essential reading
None of the Essential textbooks devote a dedicated chapter to techniques and all adopt a qualitative cultural and social approach (Cloke et al., 2005) or descriptive data are presented but statistical techniques are not used (Daniels et al., 2008; Johnston et al., 2002).

Further reading
Methods
Baxter, J. and J. Eyles Evaluating qualitative research in social geography: establishing rigour in interview analysis, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 22(4) 1997, pp.50525. Blunt, A. et al. (eds) Cultural Geography in Practice. (London: Arnold, 2003). Cosgrove, D. Prospect, perspective and the evolution of the landscape idea, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, (10) 1985, pp.4562. Flowerdew, R. and D. Martin (eds) Methods in Human Geography. (Harlow; New York: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005) second edition. Fotheringham, A.S., C. Brunsdon and M. Charlton Quantitative Geography: Perspective on Spatial Data Analysis. (London: Sage, 2000). Kitchin R and N. Tate Conducting Research into Human Geography. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2000). Limb, M. and C. Dwyer Qualitative Methodologies for Geographers: Issues and Debates. (London: Arnold, 2002). Robinson, G.M. Methods and Techniques in Human Geography. (New York: J. Wiley, c.1998).

Examples
Berman, M. Too Much is Not Enough: Metamorphoses of Times Square, in Finch, L. and C. McConville (eds) Gritty Cities: Images of the Urban. (Annadale, NSW: Pluto Press, 1999). Burgess, S. and D. Wilson Ethnic Segregation in Englands Schools, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, (30) 2005, pp.2036. Crang, P The politics of polyphony: reconfigurations in geographical authority, . Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (10) 1992, pp.52749. Cresswell, T. Weeds, Plagues and Bodily Secretions: a geographical interpretation of metaphors of displacement, Annals of the Association of American Geographer, 87(2) 1997, pp.33045. Domosh, M. The Symbolism of the Skyscraper: Case Studies of New Yorks First Tall Buildings, Journal of Urban History, 14(3) 1988, pp.32045. Doran, B.J. and B. Lees Investigating the Spatiotemporal Links between Disorder, Crime and the Fear of Crime, Professional Geographer, 57(1) 2005, pp.112. Jacobs, J. Negotiating the heart: heritage, development and identity in postimperial London, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (12) 1994, pp.75172. Johnson, N. Cast in Stone: monuments, geography and nationalism, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (13) 1995, pp.5165. Johnston, R.J., D. Rossiter and C. Pattie Disproportionality and Bias in US Presidential Elections: How Geography helped Bush defeat Gore but couldnt help Kerry beat Bush, Political Geography, (24) 2005, pp.95268.

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09 Human geography Kelly, P The Political Economy of Local Labor Control in the Philippines, . Economic Geography, 77(1) 2001. Koskela, H. and R. Pain Revisiting fear and place: womens fear of attack and the built environment, Geoforum, (31) 2000, pp.26980. Marston, S. Making difference: conflict over Irish identity in the New York City St. Patricks Day parade, Political Geography, (21) 2002, pp.37392. McNeill, D. Skyscraper Geography, Progress in Human Geography, 29(1) 2005, pp.4155. Mumford, L. The Culture of Cities. (San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1996) [ISBN 0156233010]. Muzzio, D. and T. Halpe Pleasantville? The Suburb and its representations in American Movies, Urban Affairs Review, 37(4) 2002, pp.54374. OReilly, K. and G.R. Webster A Sociodemographic and Partisan Analysis of Voting in Three Anti-Gay Rights Referenda in Oregon, Professional Geographer, 50(4) 1998, pp.498515. Poon, J.P Quantitative Methods: not positively positivist, Progress in Human .H. Geography, 29(6) 2005, pp.76672. Rollins, W.H. Whose Landscape? Technology, Fascism and Environmentalism on the National Socialist Autobahn, Annals of American Association of Geographers, 85(3) 1995, pp.494520. Stoller, P Crossroads: Tracing African paths on New York City Streets, . Ethnography 3(1) 2002, pp.3562. Strait, J.B. An Epidemiology of Neighbourhood Poverty: Causal Factors of Infant Mortality Among Blacks and Whites in the Metropolitan United States, The Professional Geographer, 58(1) 2006, pp.3953. Sturkin, M. The aesthetics of absence: rebuilding Ground Zero, American Ethnologist, 31(3) 2004, pp.31125.

Works cited
Johnston, R.J. The politics of changing human geographys agenda: textbooks and the representation of increasing diversity, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31(3) 2006. Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

Aims of the chapter

The objective of this chapter is to enhance your familiarity with some of the methods that underpin geographical research. The chapter outlines the key features of quantitative and qualitative approaches, giving an indication of their strengths and weaknesses, using some examples to illustrate how each contributes to geographical enquiry. The chapter is not intended as a practical manual on how to use particular approaches. Those of you who are studying this unit as part of a BSc Geography and Environment will come across these in detail in unit 148 Methods of geographical analysis. The philosophical background to methodology can be acquired from the literature cited in Chapter 2 and the technical aspects from looking at example texts given in the Further reading for this chapter. In the sections that follow, I point you towards some articles that use either quantitative or qualitative approaches. These are not selected because they are famous but largely because the topics could have been addressed with either approach. As you read these articles, it is important to think about why the particular approach was selected; how it informed the analysis; and how a different approach might have arrived at similar or different insights.

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Learning outcomes
By the end of the chapter and the relevant reading, you should be able to: distinguish the characteristics of quantitative and qualitative approaches to geographical enquiry identify which set of techniques is best suited to addressing which kind of geographical research issues.

Introduction
In his classic text, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn argued that knowledge in the natural sciences goes through distinct paradigm shifts. A paradigm, to Kuhn, is a basic framework for research that includes a shared set of research questions that are regarded as important, an agreed object of study and shared procedures including research techniques. Over time, research results to one set of questions will change the consensus, and generate new shared questions, subjects and approaches. This change marks a paradigm shift. Johnston (2006) has argued that human geography has tended not to adopt the paradigm shift approach. Unlike the physical sciences that have developed by replacing one set of ideas with another, human geography has tended to set up parallel ideas, that to some extent compete with one another for attention but just as often ignore each other. Johnston notes how quantitative spatial science has been denigrated or simply ignored by the authors of human geography textbooks over the past two decades which have tended to stress the cultural turn (see Chapter 2 of the subject guide). Johnston traces how some textbooks (not all) have been used to mobilise particular agendas or sub-fields within human geography and they adopt a politics of silence to quantitative approaches, sometimes just with a quick dismissal as in decline since the 1970s or as a necessary evil to be endured; at other times ignoring them completely even in chapters that purport to outline what is human geography or to identify the big questions that form the Foundations to the contemporary discipline (see Cloke et al., Introduction). While most geographers have sympathy with either quantitative or qualitative methods, and many have an antipathy to the alternative, there are many dangers to representing the discipline through only one approach. First, of course, is that one of the attractions of geography to students is its holism relative to many other social sciences. Cutting out one approach therefore undermines a characteristic that draws many of us to geography to begin with. Second, geography does not dictate the tastes or paradigm shifts of the wider social sciences and while more qualitative approaches have been in the ascendancy for two decades this might not continue. Indeed, the emergence of Geographical Information Systems during the late 1980s appeared to reintroduce quantitative methods. Other sub-fields, such as population, health or economic geography have always retained a quantitative component. Third, approaches are usually research question-specific, although questions can be fashioned to fit particular approaches, and thus it is important to be aware that some questions are difficult to address using just one approach.

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Let me give you an example from my own experience. In my work on street children in Mexico I am interested in their multiple identities and how these are related to their interactions over public space. A quantitative approach would be inappropriate to the research questions, to the nature of the subject group, and difficult in the context of meeting children on the street, often at night, and when they are using drugs. However, the appropriateness of qualitative approaches to the project, does not make the production of high-quality research automatic (I wish it were otherwise). Moreover, qualitative and quantitative approaches contain a treasure chest of specific techniques, and knowing how to choose between them is critical to how research is undertaken. By contrast, a quantitative approach might allow a researcher to convert complex information into numerical form and to analyse large amounts of information (as variables) using standardised mathematical language that is more precise than prose, and arguably free of cultural influence. Indeed, for some topics the conduct and presentation of research as quantitative might afford it more credibility than a qualitative approach, at least with certain audiences. Consider Johnston et al.s (2005) analysis of the US 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. The analysis centres on the extent and nature of the bias within the US electoral system that can elect Bush as president in 2000 with a minority of the popular vote and a majority of the Electoral College (five seats), and elect Bush again in 2004 with a three per cent majority of the popular vote and a six per cent majority in the College (34 seats). It would be straightforward to fashion a study from a qualitative perspective to consider bias in the system, not least given the extensive 1 gerrymandering that exists throughout US politics. One might imagine holding interviews with political activists, with voters in Florida or Ohio, with the approximately 40 per cent of Americans who abstain or who are not registered to vote, with religious groups or with ethnic minorities (electorally, the majority in many districts). But such research itself would be attacked as biased, not only in the conventional sense of using a non-representational sample, that the researcher might defend, but against the subject that electoral bias in the US is systemic and the research approach, therefore, has to consider structure over time, space and in relation to effect. This is what Johnston et al.s study manages to achieve. The College system provides a first past the post formula of allocating College seats to a candidate; while nominally seats per state are proportional to population, the relationship is non-linear, and winning will depend on turnout. Significant bias is therefore possible. Johnston et al. show that Bushs support was more efficient than Gores in 2000, winning the smaller states with a low turnout of the vote and not wasting votes in states that were lost to the Democrats. Bush was able to win College seats with fewer votes. In 2004 Kerry was more efficient than Bush, largely because the Republicans turned out more voters across the country, but his popular vote was unable to increase. Johnston shows how, if the Electoral College had proportional allocations (equal shares), whether each candidate would return an equal share of the seats; if they do not, then they benefit or suffer from bias in the system. Bush gained from a geographical bias in the distribution of his vote in 2000 and Kerry benefited in 2004. Lastly, researchers will need to decide on the broader scope of the research, its philosophical underpinning (epistemology). Quantitative research also promises to test the significance of the relationships in datasets and provides

Gerrymandering is the

deliberate division of electoral areas in order to give special advantages to one group and bias against another.

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possibilities for prediction. Quantitative approaches can be both idiographic (descriptive) and nomothetic (law building), although they are especially suited to the latter. Quantitative research can be either deductive, where research produces improved generalisations, laws, or theory by testing the implications or predictions of existing theories against empirical evidence; or inductive, where it can build laws or theory from ordering empirical evidence. In either case, the search for scientific laws depends on corroborating universal empirical regularities.

Quantitative methods
Quantitative analysis relies on the availability of appropriate and high-quality data. Broadly, such data fall into one of two categories, primary data that are collected with a research objective in mind or secondary data that were collected for a different purpose, usually not by the researcher, and which are now subject to new analysis sometimes for a purpose not envisaged by the original study. In both cases, however, the researcher needs to consider: whether the data were collected from a random sample whether the sample was random but employed spatial clusters (by postcode, school district, ward level census data, grid references) or whether it was stratified (e.g. to ensure adequate sampling of a particular subject group that might be under-represented in a random survey).

Sample size
The researcher will need to make a judgment about the required sample size. Where the aim of the study is to construct a general law, then statistical tests improve their power, to detect relationships with smaller standard errors, with larger sample sizes. The difficulty is that inference based on the asymptotic properties of estimators, that is, an infinite sample size, means that taking a sample of 40 respondents is going to be inadequate. In the study of ethnic segregation in English schools provided by Burgess and Wilson (2005) the sample size was all 3,060 state-maintained secondary schools that have a mandatory duty to file an Annual School Census. Their findings, therefore, that ethnic segregation across schools is high but that there are variations according to whether students are South Asian or Black is given credibility by the complete coverage of the dataset. The authors are also fortunate, in one sense, that their data on ethnicity of pupils can be analysed against other data collected on the same group, such as the percentage receiving Free School Meals (a proxy for poverty) and the Index of Multiple Deprivation, as well as ward level data on ethnicity in the wider population. Similarly, in his study of a relationship between racism and health in the US, Strait (2006) is able to use infant mortality data for 94 Metropolitan Statistical Areas, applying the Vital Statistics database for 198284, 199294 and 19992001 as well as the census. The good demographic coverage of these datasets and their geographical co-ordination means that the authors results possess general as well as spatial and temporal credibility. He is able to assert with considerable confidence that infant mortality has improved for both black and white populations over the timeframe, but that disparities are still high by the end of the period; mortality is twice as high for blacks as

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for whites. Moreover, infant mortality is positively related to poor neighbourhoods, with the association that poor areas display higher rates of crime, higher psychosocial stress, lower environmental quality and standards of sanitation. Regression models show that mortality is related to poor and segregated neighbourhoods. However, the study indicates, that by 1999 maternal natality is increasingly important, especially the growing importance of teenage and unmarried motherhood to mortality rates, and to some extent independent of socio-environmental factors.

Secondary data
These studies rely on secondary data from other surveys. In this case, the researcher needs to consider whether the secondary data contain appropriate categories or whether the original data can be re-categorised. There is also the possibility of too much data. The UKs Family Expenditure Survey 2000 for example includes 176 data groups each with over 140 different variables all of which are explained in a 13-volume user guide. Many secondary data surveys are longitudinal household expenditure surveys for example and can provide valuable insights into changing views and conditions over time. Longitudinal surveys also allow researchers the possibility of conducting specific follow-ups. But care is needed to check whether the earlier surveys addressed methodology consistently did they retain the same sampling frame, did they change or add categories, did they ask the same questions at all and in the same way? Where good information on how the primary data were collected and using the data for a different purpose requires little, or at least explicit, re-categorisation, then significant use can be made of secondary materials. A study by OReilly and Webster (1998) used data from three anti-gay rights referenda (in 1988, 1992, 1994), complemented with voting data in presidential and gubernatorial elections, and census data. From the census, the authors use factor analysis to assess the dimensions of characteristics from urbanrural location, employment, education, family structure, tenure and religion as a means to gain purchase on whether (potential) voters are traditionalists or modernisers. From common variance, the analysis shows that 36 per cent is attributable to an urbanrural (density) profile, 16 per cent to a social definition of traditionalist through lower education and income profiles, and 10 per cent to association with blue-collar middle-class jobs. These factors were then added to the electoral variables and a multiple regression run. Looking across the three referenda voters, a shift is detected. In 1988, when the referenda was accepted by 53 per cent of voters, 65 per cent variance could be explained by voter support for an independent farright Christian-backed candidate. The 1988 referenda measure was subsequently struck out as unconstitutional. In 1992 a much strongerworded measure was rejected, with 93 per cent variance accounted for by mean Republican vote in the preceding period. In 1994 a softer-worded referenda was again rejected, by a slim margin, with 92 per cent variance due to Republican party voter support. The authors conclude that over the period, voter behaviour has become more strongly tied to party politics and more weakly associated with social characteristics as captured by the traditionalist moderniser cleavage. As a comparison article with a qualitative approach, but also making strong use of secondary material, see Marston (2002) on the ethnic and sexual politics of the St Patricks Day parade in New York. Marston began with collecting newspaper articles to identify key themes, how these appeared to

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divide between support for the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organisation, and a list of interviewees. The secondary survey allowed Marston to target a relatively few interviewees, just 15 in all, with precise questions.

Question bias and researcher control

The researcher is unable to control for all possibilities of bias in data collection, not least the reception to a question. There is often a false dichotomy drawn between quantitative and qualitative research in at least one important sense. At the moment of the primary survey, while the approach might be formalised as a questionnaire (including increasing use of automated surveys on the Internet), the relationship between the researcher and respondent and the answers given by the latter are subjective. In 1966 the understanding of a question about pollution (let alone global warming) would be different from 2006, and conversely a survey on immigration in 2006 might take a concept such as multiculturalism as understood whereas in 1966 no such concept existed. Did the researcher take time to explain these terms? In 1997 when living in the US a pollster interested in the forthcoming governor election interviewed me. Would I vote Democrat? No. Was that because I was a supporter of the Republican party? No. Did I object to the Democrats stance on issue x, y, z? No. Was it because I would not be voting at all? Yes. Was that because I was not registered to vote? Yes. Would I like help to register my right to vote? No. At no point did the interviewer ask if I was a US citizen and I didnt tell him that I wasnt. Whether he eventually ticked a box that recorded my preference as abstention or marked the interview as invalid I do not know. I do know that a little explanation would have saved a lot of time in this case, and improved the quality of responses in many others, not least the 22 million people in the US without citizenship who are caught up in these exercises. Quantitative techniques in human geography are often based on data collected from a survey, usually via a questionnaire. We should be aware, therefore, of the problems with the questionnaire. Most obviously, questionnaires can gather data out of context: questionnaires are conducted in a sterile or unnatural environment (doorsteps, car parks, by telephone) that deny opportunities to elaborate or substantiate answers and encourage a quick-fire response. In a questionnaire no account is taken for whether a no is said definitely or with disinterest; if a person maintained eye contact or looked away on sensitive issues. Questionnaires can also elicit inappropriate answers. For example, a respondent tied to their doorstep for 40 minutes answering questions about their financial situation might give answers that they think the researcher wants to hear. Questionnaires might also pose a question in an inappropriate manner that might be both out of context to the formality of the questionnaire, that are embarrassing, or hold consequences beyond the just a few questions. Questionnaires rarely permit explanation of the question: a survey that asked Have you ever been sexually harassed? found that very few women said yes; whereas more observational work found that 4050 per cent of women at work experienced harassment within the legal definition (Dellinger and Williams, 2002). Was the question too blunt? Were women harassed but unaware of the legal definition? Did they not feel harassed?

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Problems of data availability and applicability can be resolved by the joining of sources. We can appreciate the simplicity of joining forms of secondary data in the article by Doran and Lees (2005). Looking at the spatio-temporal links between disorder, crime and a fear of crime in Wollongong, the authors link together crime statistics, mapping exercises conducted and a weighted disorder index from observation of the built environment constructed by the authors. In this case using GIS the authors overlay the data to create a picture of the hotspots of actual and feared crime, areas avoided by the public and evidence of incivility (graffiti), noting that in many cases these phenomena do not geographically overlap. The article ends with a discussion of the applicability of GIS to the governance of crime and fear of crime, and to other measures such as architectural and design changes to reduce levels. However, students should consider how many of these policy and research suggestions are justified by the data inference of the article, and how they might be improved or disregarded with qualitative work. How might, for example, observational work and interviews with residents, and perhaps particularly with the homeless, graffiti artists, hip-hop crews, gangs, security guards, groups such as school children or single mothers, across different ethnic communities alter the perception of fear, use, crime and intervention? See Koskela and Pain (2000). Activity 3.1 Before we move on, think about your own experiences of participating in surveys or interviews. Were you told and did you understand fully the purpose of the research? Were you told clearly who the research was for? How comfortable were you with the questions? Were any questions too personal or sensitive? In your country or culture are there issues which are difficult to ask about? Under what circumstances would you not tell the truth in a questionnaire or interview? How might a different approach, for example a focus group, change your attitude to speaking openly about a sensitive topic?

Interpretation
Lastly, we need to consider the issue of interpretation. A colleague compares quantitative and qualitative approaches to using primary data in his class with reference to a recently published paper (Kelly, 2001). He cites an exchange between a researcher and a senior official in a local agency responsible for attracting Foreign Direct Investment into the Philippines. The researcher collected primary information from approximately 40 key informants in various sectors and institutions of the labour market, recognising that the approach is qualitative.
[Question] Do you think the lack of unions is an attractive feature for foreign investors coming in? [Answer] Oh yes, yes. I mean, any capitalist, for that matter, would like to have his operations [that are] union free. Yes, definitely. In fact it would be a come on.

The exchange is cited as evidence of a de-facto union-free policy in most economic zones. But can this be inferred from the exchange, even assuming other similar statements were made during the rest of the interview? Surely, this is just the officials view? Worse, the quotation might have been selected to present a preconceived idea of the researcher or because it had an especially presentable linguistic style. In much qualitative research the richer the information, the worse comparability and analysis may become. Quantitative approaches, using descriptive or Chi Squares offer concise and consistent descriptions of sets. But, they also present some of their own. In using descriptive data for

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example, it is common to use averages (usually the mean). But the usefulness of the mean will depend on the sample size and range of data, making it necessary in technical terms to know the size of n and the standard deviation. In less technical terms, however, consider former Secretary of Labour in the Clinton administration, Robert Reichs observation in a speech voicing his concerns about inequality in the US. He noted:
Average wages have been going up in this country. Average wages have been going up. But, every time you hear somebody talk about averages, in this economy, watch your wallet, because the average doesnt tell the most interesting and most important story. The basketball player, Shaquille ONeal and I have an average height of 6'1". You have to look behind the averages and find out, once again, whats happening and why.

Robert Reich is not tall. With a sample size of two, there is no standard deviation (the square root of the mean of the square of the differences between each value and the mean).

Indices
Consider too the advantages and weaknesses of presenting quantitative data as an index. An index is a useful means to summarise a concept that has been produced by combining several variables relating to different aspects of that concept: see the use of an Index of Dissimilarity by Burgess and Wilson (2005). But which variables should be used? What if two variables describe similar aspects of the concept? In building an index of service delivery across hospitals, for example, one variable might be investment in patient care and a second might be doctor-to-patient ratios. But doctor-to-patient ratios will depend to a large degree on investment. Is one included, and if so which one, or both? Variables forming an index are often standardised. Patient waiting times for example could be recorded as hours, days, weeks or months, but these real data will be awkward to handle and difficult to put into a complex composite with other variables such as investment which might run to billions of pounds. However, scaling waiting times as 1-to-100 (100 is immediate care, 1 is slowest delivery), might distort the overall Index if investment is similarly recorded as 1-to-100 (1 is 50 million, 100 is 1.6 billion). A composite of 200 would indicate maximum investment and immediate care, 2 would indicate dismal care and investment. But is this an appropriate composite? Might investment be weighted more than waiting times, and if so by how much? A classic index is the Human Development Index (HDI), an attempt developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and first employed in 1990 to capture a broader sense of development than just national income. Concerns had been raised for some time that the conventional GDP tables did not capture peoples fulfilment of basic needs, while all the other tables in World Development reports, from food intake to televisions per capita were non-comparable. Moreover, as interest in rights and entitlements, and with the management of development (governance) rose up the international agenda, a greater emphasis on delivery was deemed important. The overall concept of the HDI is development; the components are life expectancy, literacy and educational enrolment, and GDP per capita (standard of living). Measures for the three variables are unweighted and combined into a composite Index 0-to-1, with countries ranked on outcome.

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The Index reveals how some countries emphasis on social expenditures increases their table rank above their position based on GDP alone. The most well-known case is Cuba, which in some years moves around 15 to 20 places on the HDI compared to GDP The HDI has also been manipulated to . indicate how within and across countries the Index might vary according to gender and race: South Africa at the end of apartheid had a black HDI ranking of 123 and a white ranking of 24. However, using a ranking of the Index, obscures the extent of the differences between the original values: in the previous case the Index does not say how many times worse off blacks were than whites, only that people in 98 countries were better off than black South Africans compared to white. The Index is therefore sensitive to a skew in one of the underlying variables (technically this makes the mean and standard deviation poor summary measures); a small skew can change the Index score and have a dramatic impact on ranked position.

Qualitative methods
By contrast to quantitative approaches, a qualitative approach is less interested in conformity or regularity, and is more acute to the possibilities of diversity and difference. It is overtly subjective recognising that all knowledge and how it is assembled is the result of personal interpretations. Qualitative geography is interested in the representations, meanings and feelings associated with places. It is interested in whose representations are the most dominant and why, and how peoples attachment to place is talked about and how others contest this discourse. Qualitative approaches might not be the most appropriate means to discover where a new hospital might be located (although they might help), but in matters where we do not need to be reductionist then a qualitative approach has a lot to offer. According to Cosgrove, qualitative appreciation allows us to bring into geography the many awkward, powerful motivating passions of human action including the moral, patriotic, religious, sexual, ethnic and political; whereas seeing the world as a practical objective map removes any sense of wonderment, the real magic of geography that places are different, unpredictable, unreal.

Reading landscapes
Qualitative methodologies are often used in layers to build up interpretation in what anthropologists refer to as thick description. The most frequentlyused techniques are reading the landscape (hermeneutics), participant observation and interviews. These methods may endeavour to consider issues that might also be addressed quantitatively; for example, about the fear of crime, perceptions of architecture or reasons for voting behaviour. However, qualitative approaches claim greater purchase over quantitative especially when considering issues such as power, ideology, modernity and tradition, morality, resistance. As geographers, we are interested in uncovering the many ways in which ideas of space are socially, politically and culturally constructed. Uncovering these meanings requires an appreciation of how landscapes are read. In English the term landscape is derived from the German Landschaft (area or region) and usually signifies the study of visible form. To Cosgrove (1985) the landscape idea is a humanist response to the Cartesian division of subject and object, associated with the emergence of Euclidian geometry that provided artists (and map makers) with a command of perspective.

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Chapter 3: Geographical methods Landscape is thus a way of seeing a composition and structuring of the world so that it may be appropriated by a detached, individual spectator to whom an illusion of order and control is offered through the composition of space according to the certainties of geometry. (Cosgrove, 1985, p.55)

In this context, landscape is a way of seeing the visible forms on the earths surface and their composition to create a scene or visualisation. While research has tended to consider landscape through decoding the texts of painters, filmmakers, architects and designers, it is worth recalling that we read the landscape all the time, in many different ways. Reading here is simply a metaphor, indicating that we need to consider more than the immediate image to discover different viewpoints and meanings. Immediately then we can appreciate how reading the landscape is subjective, because just like my understanding of the narrative within a book, my interpretation of landscape is likely to differ from another persons. While my reading will be framed (another metaphor) by my cultural context, it is important to note that the manenvironment relationship is active within culture and not determined by culture. Cultural context changes, my relationship to culture is constantly changing and not always known, and in the sense that I am inter-cultural, I am sensitive to cultures other than my own; subjectivity reflects this knowledge and as such is not positivist. Place is vital to this active culture because numerous signals of meaning are being communicated, that can be (mis)understood, abided by or rejected. Consider the example (from Cosgrove) of why we might speak quietly in church even if we might not be Christian. Churches are deemed quiet spaces in which to reflect; a quality that is communicated through architectural codes (and sounds such as the presence of echoes) that we read and interpret culturally. Although I know that not all religions are quiet and although I am not especially religious, I am encouraged and conform when in church. To understand how culture is written into the landscape we might draw on an observation from Pierre Bourdieu who noted the double life of social structure between the material presence and the meanings and symbols of those materials. This double life was also developed by Henri Lefebvre (1974) who distinguished between the artefacts of buildings, monuments and design, or what he referred to as Representations of Space that reflect power, and the symbols, signs and codes that are employed to interpret these spaces, or Representational Spaces. The interaction of these two Spaces captures how we experience the city. However, this interaction is not simply the relation between what is intended and how it is interpreted because, Lefebvre believed, people do not have the freedom to think and feel as capitalism serves to obscure its own meanings. What we touched upon in Chapter 2 the influence of a new Cultural Geography and, more generally, of postmodernism now becomes important. Postmodernism holds much greater faith in human agency, in the importance of peoples own reading of landscape; whether particular meanings are lost to us by capitalism does not prevent us from making up others that might be provocative or even empowering. We can appreciate three points which are described in the following section.

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Intention and meaning

First, some meanings may be deliberately written into the landscape by designers, builders, planners and financiers. Look, for example, at the layout of Washington DC (Figure 3.1). What are the representations of space contained in the design? The layout by Pierre LEnfant is a mix of the radial pattern used by European monarchs, in which power emanates from a central point, and the repetitious grid-iron structure signifying equality and democracy. The design therefore symbolises neither centralism nor decentralisation, very much like the foundling American nation; in essence the design was federal. If we go down to another level of detail, we can observe that the plan consists of 15 nodes (or circles) each named after a state at the moment of Independence (13 states plus Kentucky and Tennessee). Pennsylvania as the key state of independence, however, is given greater presence over the others, marked by its own avenue that links the White House and the Capitol. Pennsylvania, therefore, links the executive to the legislature. The idea of Pennsylvania as a check and balance on tyranny is amended later with the offices of the FBI located about halfway along. If this were not sufficient to indicate that LEnfant intended Washington DC to be read as a Declaration of Independence then we can also note how both White House and Capitol form the far ends of an L; with the central point being the Washington Monument, a reminder to both of the ideals and sacrifice required to create each, and the rallying point for numerous political marches over the centuries that often congregate in front of The Lincoln Memorial, which itself reminds Americans of the need to renew ideals. The Mall contains numerous memorials and public institutions marking the development of the nation.

Figure 3.1: Pierre-Charles LEnfants 1791 plan for the city of Washington (Source: Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington, DC) A more contemporary example of intended readings in the landscape is indicated by the Mercato Shopping Mall in Dubai (Figure 3.2). A walk through Mercato indicates the same commercial presence as in most large and upmarket malls, designer stores and coffee shops, a degree of security and retail entertainment through performers and muzak. But the design of the mall, and of other locations in Dubai, reflects an attempt by the developer to instil a particular set of meanings. The Mercato Mall plays on

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an Italian theme, perhaps of Venice or Florence; city-states based on an ordered trading culture. In the mid-1990s, Dubai was actively promoting itself as the commercial hub of the Gulf and ideally located to arbitrage trade between Europe and the Far East, especially with the return of Hong Kong to China, and with the emergence of Russia as an important economic player. The Mall performs these representations through architectural design both outside and in. We might extend the analysis by noting that the Italian city-states were also limited democracies that while deliberative through popular consensus were based on familial and aerial allegiances, not perhaps unlike the domination of Dubai by a family elite. For examples of how geographers and others have interpreted the intentions of city builders, planners and political interests, as well the representation of particular places, see Domosh (1988), McNeill (2005), Muzzio and Halpe (2002), Rollins (1995).

Figure 3.2: The Mercato Mall, Dubai (Source: Photos by G.A. Jones, 2004)

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Contested meanings
The second point is that meanings are contested. Simply, the readings or meanings of dominant interests or people may not tally with their interpretation. Consider the debates over Trafalgar Square, initiated by a proposal from Mayor Ken Livingstone in 2000 that some of the statues in the square should be removed as they meant nothing to most Londoners and should be replaced by people that ordinary Londoners and people from around the world would know. Implicit in the Mayors attack on a Trafalgar Square populated by unknown men of war was a vision for the Square with statues of people of high moral standing, more contemporary and multi-cultural. Ken Livingstone had initiated a debate; his reading was contested. Heritage groups argued that if the Mayor did not know much about the people represented in Trafalgar Square then he should learn: monuments were machines for learning and London should not pay for the Mayors ignorance of history. Commentators observed that General Havelock was responsible for crushing the Indian mutiny in 1857 and Sir Charles Napier crushed Parliamentary reform in the nineteenth century; their meaning today was not as men of honour but dismay. From an architectural perspective, it was pointed out that the small statues provided the townscape to the Square, supported by the slope to give the eye perspective to Nelsons Column and, especially, the under-sized National Gallery (1838) which otherwise lacks presence. Architectural readers of the Square noted that it had been modelled and remodelled many times over the centuries, from John Nashs 1820s design, Charles Barrys in the 1840s when the Column was added, and later by Edwin Lutyens who added the fountains (1919) and by Edwin Landseer who designed the Lions which at the time were thought of as out of place. The Mayors comments also stirred national sentiments. Organisations of ex-servicemen argued that the Square was a place of respect for the dead, most obviously marked out by Nelsons Column, but that statues to military leaders are also representative of the men who served with them. This was a particularly politicised reading, coming just a few months after government plans had been leaked considering budget reductions to the War Graves Commission that maintains military graves overseas, the attacks on the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square and the Cenotaph by anti-capitalism groups, and misgivings among some military representative organisations about the inclusion of a wider service community on Armistice Day (recognition of the Womens Land Army, air raid wardens, animals and latterly of deserters). Tourist groups offered a slightly different national reading, pointing out that Trafalgar Square was a space larger than London or Britain; it represented Britain abroad, it was a selling point. A number of different groups took issue with Mayor Livingstones reading of the statues. Voices from the Church wondered whether statues of dead people who had meaning to only a minority of the population and who failed to represent a vision of multi-culturalism had to be removed from public spaces. What should happen to religious statues or symbols therefore? Others, among them political commentators from the Right (Conservative Party, London Evening Standard newspaper) and Centre-Left (The Guardian) wondered where the rebuilding (or re-branding) of London along a politically-correct agenda in which only a nice history was worthy of remembrance would lead. Would the Mayor remove the statue of Charles I (1633) today commemorating a king whose demise sparked deliberative

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democracy, or the small statue to James II (1686), a king whose disdain for Parliament provoked the English Revolution (1688), but whose Catholicism would be in keeping for a country with a growing Catholic population, or Admiralty Arch (technically the National Monument to Queen Empress Victoria, 1911)? And how, and who, should decide? Should democratic and multi-cultural London adopt proportional representation for monuments, buildings and street names? In which case does Gandhi have too many statues, to say nothing of streets and buildings? The debate also shifted to whether contemporary London or Britain was worthy of representation: what figures merited presence on Trafalgar Square? It was observed that a plinth on the Square had remained vacant. Rather than remove statues, shouldnt London at least provide some signs of what values it wants represented in its landscape? A number of newspaper polls took place asking Londoners to vote for their candidate with suggestions from editors including Sir Isaac Newton or Charles Darwin. One poll found the popular choice for a statue was Liam Gallagher, lead singer with the group Oasis. Instead the empty plinth became the site of an annual competition for a piece of art. Rachel Whiteread, the first winner, installed Plinth, a glass mirror image of the empty plinth and, more provocative and more recent, Marc Quinn installed Alison Lapper Pregnant (Figure 3.3) and offered his own reading of Trafalgar Square and contemporary Britain (Box 3.1). Further examples of how geographers and others have looked at the contesting of landscape meanings are Berman (1999), Cresswell (1997), Jacobs (1994) and Johnson (1995).

Figures 3.3: Sir Charles Napier and Alison Lapper Pregnant Box 3.1: Marc Quinn, Contesting Landscape Meaning, The Guardian, 7 September 2005. Quinn observed that statues since the Egyptians have been devices to turn opinion into hard stone fact, most public sculpture (not using the term statue is relevant here) is about the past, it tells us who won. Alison Lapper Pregnant, however, is about a disabled woman, not usually regarded as a winner, and the future is indicated by her pregnancy. Quinn notes the irony that Lord Nelson was disabled with only one eye and one arm. It is a point that he develops, noting how in museums people admire the broken statues as shorthand for

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beauty but if a person whose body was really the same shape as these sculptures was to come into the room as Alison Lappers upper torso is the same as the Venus de Milos then these peoples reaction would be very different. Quinns reading of Trafalgar Square was less concerned with design, bus routes, security and prescribed access by cultural events than by the inclusion, a space where we all exist together as society and, in a city in which the most visible form of public art appears on billboards, it is time to claim back this space for art and revitalise it. Neither dead generals nor mobile phone ads will do.

Landscape, place and identity

We can detect a third point from a combination of the previous two; namely, that if we understand landscape meanings as plural and contested, then meaning is constantly reproduced and is therefore linked to how place/identity are constructed. The last example is the relation between the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty. Skyscrapers represent power and prestige reflected in their size (mass as well as height) and the use of materials and motifs to signal an aesthetic cultural legitimacy and civic intentions. Note, for example, how many of the great buildings in cities around the world adapt designs from Egypt, Greece or Italy, or from France, or use marble or alabaster to display wealth or reflect light (Woolworth Building), use glass to indicate transparency (London General Assembly, German Parliament) or hygiene (Lever House, New York). Doors or foyers are amplified to indicate a relation to the public (civics), art to display good taste and beacons to suggest endurance (see Domosh, 1988; ONeil, 2005). How might we read the World Trade Center (WTC) before and after 9/11? To de Certeau the WTC floated on the money of Wall Street, to some New Yorkers the towers were often referred to in familial terms as twins or sisters while this gendered reading was contested by the former Head of New York Port Authority, Austin Tobin, who often referred to the towers as the erection. The original intention was just as ironic. Constructed in an area of largely Eastern European and Jewish tenements and workshops, the two towers with 110 floors were designed to combine a citadel or city-within-acity design with the remit not to look like a social housing program. The lead architect, Minoro Yamasaki, had worked on the Pruitt Igoe housing development in St Louis (1955) which was demolished in 1973 to mark the end of modernism (see Chapter 2). The WTC was not about social engineering but capital. The WTC symbolised new money, it cast a shadow over Wall Street, and was open to any firm but specifically set out to attract global companies (163 nation groups worked in the WTC). Perhaps not by accident the architect was Japanese who noted:
There are a few very influential architects who sincerely believe that all buildings must be strong. The word strong in this context seems to connote powerful that is, each building should be a monument to the virility of our society. These architects look with derision upon attempts to build a friendly, more gentle kind of building. The basis for their belief is that our culture is derived primarily from Europe, and that most of the important traditional examples of European architecture are monumental, reflecting the need of the state, church, or the feudal families the primary patrons of these buildings to awe and impress the masses. This is incongruous today. Although it is inevitable for architects who admire these great monumental buildings of Europe to strive for the quality most evident in them grandeur, the elements of mysticism and power, basic to cathedrals and palaces, are also incongruous today, because the buildings we build for our times are for a totally different purpose. (Yamasaki)

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Yet for a modern building the WTC did not reflect back the surrounding buildings through the use of glass curtain walls. Rather, light was absorbed by the building, in part achieved by the vertical metal cladding that also served to draw the eye upwards from the large and empty plaza at the base. However, we can also read the WTC in other ways. Yamasaki saw WTC as:
a living representation of mans belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his belief in the co-operation of men, and through this co-operation his ability to find greatnessI feel this way about it. World trade means world peace and consequently the World Trade Center buildings in New Yorkhad a bigger purpose than just to provide room for tenants. The World Trade Center is a living symbol of mans dedication to world peacebeyond the compelling need to make this a monument to world peace, the World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a representation of mans belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the co-operation of men, and through co-operation, his ability to find greatness. (Yamasaki)

That reading was supported by the association of the WTC with the Pentagon and Congress on 9/11 and its association post-attack as Ground Zero, another site of modernity, the term used to describe the point directly above an atomic explosion. The Ground Zero term, however, was also especially apt for symbolising Square One in a city built on a grid-iron plan (that the WTC did not respect) and for the US, marking a point of violence from which a chain reaction ensues. These readings form the basis of how the rebuilding of the WTC site becomes a focal point to understanding the association of identity and place. At one level the rebuilding is founded on the idea of the WTC as a memorial. Ex-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani argued that the site should be rebuilt so that skyline will be made whole again and ex-Governor George Pataki claimed that to rebuild New York is to rebuild America. A number of the designs submitted in the tender for reconstruction included the Stars and Stripes either in laser lights or motifs. The eventual winner Daniel Liebeskind, best known for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, draped one of his proposed buildings in the US flag as well as arranging the new buildings as tombstones around the sunken footprints of the towers (graves). As with many of the submissions Liebeskind included a viewing point of the former tower site, placing his 70 feet underground at the foundation base where most of the dead were found: the foundations having withstood the unimaginable trauma of the destruction and stand as eloquent as the Constitution itself asserting the durability of Democracy and the value of individual life. Liebeskind proposes a Park of Heroes and a Wedge of Light where each year on 9/11 between 8.46 and 10.28am when the first aircraft struck and the second tower collapsed the sun will shine without shadow. Ground Zeros reconstruction thus accentuates the memorialisation of death (see Sturken, 2004). The second theme running through Ground Zero is the idea of Freedom and Liberty. The site is to have a Freedom Museum ordered in four concentric rings; from the assault on freedom; New York as a world city, America ever widening the circle of freedom; and lastly The World which will shine a spotlight on places that lack basic human freedoms. In the Liebeskind submission Liberty plays a number of important roles.

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The Freedom Tower is proposed to stand 1,776 feet tall, signifying the date of Independence and a spiritual peak as the tallest building in the city. The tower will also mirror the Statue of Liberty, a symbol that Liebeskind played on in opening his submission:
I arrived by ship to New York as a teenager, an immigrant, and like millions of others before me, my first sight was the Statue of Liberty and the amazing skyline of Manhattan. I have never forgotten that sight or what it stands for. This is what this project is all about.

The imagery is immediately evocative and Liebeskind, and others, frequently used an image of the reconstructed site through a foreground of the Statue of Liberty. But how does this association work? The Statue of Liberty full name Liberty Enlightening the World was unveiled on 26 October 1886 but was inspired 30 years earlier by FredericAuguste Bartholdis proposal to build a statue at the Suez Canal (opened in 1869) to be called Egypt Carrying Light to Asia. In 1871 Bartholdi refloated the scheme as a gift to the US from France to mark the centenary of independence. In 1877 US Congress accepted the proposal but offered no money to construct the pedestal that was financed by Joseph Pulitzer and by public subscription. An uncomfortable parallel to the financial wrangles and delays over the WTC reconstruction therefore is already presented. How might we read the Statue of Liberty? First, the Statue was to be a counterpoint to the shortly-to-be-opened Ellis Island Immigration processing centre in New York harbour, opened in 1890 (closed in 1954). Second, the Statue represents non-revolutionary liberty. Based on Marianne compared to Delacroixs painting Liberty Guarding the People, mounting the barricade, half naked and armed, the American liberty is modestly dressed, static and clearly not about to fight anyone. Liberty represents freedoms won but not being fought for: an uncomfortable association with the present geopolitical rhetoric. Bartholdi, however, was fully aware of the conservative notion of liberty in the US:
Revolutionary Liberty cannot evoke American Libertywhich after 100 years of uninterrupted existence should appear not as an intrepid young girl but as a woman of mature years, calm, advancing with the light but sure step of progress.

Liberty underscores this conservative maturity through use of Masonic motifs, most obviously the torch, and an ambiguous gender profile. Compared to Britannia or Columbia, Liberty is not woman-as-warrior but is mannish in the same way that The Sphinx is regarded as androgynous-male. Nevertheless Liberty works at a formidable iconographic level. Consider the poem The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1883) added to the pedestal in 1903:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame With conquering limbs astride from land to land; here at our seawashed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is imprisoned lightning, And her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand glows Worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbour that twin cities frame. Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!

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Chapter 3: Geographical methods cries she with silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Lazarus was Jewish, the poem was added as a fundraising manoeuvre, especially with an eye to the influx of Jews from Russia. The Colossus idea indicates a beacon to Europe, but not a destination point. It says come, but also, keep on moving.

Qualitative approaches and rigour

The above account is clearly subjective. I once took LSE students to Ground Zero and gave a 10-minute on street lecture about the landscape. Behind me through the chain fence an excavation worker appeared to disagree, shaking his head to some of the points, while a few tourists and others gathered in and seemed enthralled by a different perspective. One can agree or disagree with interpretation. But because a qualitative approach is subjective does not mean that it is rigorous, in the sense that another person asking the same questions of the same issue or place might arrive at broadly similar perspectives. The need for rigour is exemplified by participant observation. Sometimes thought of as privileged eavesdropping, participation observation offers researchers the opportunity to understand social practices from the inside and especially through the idea of everyday life. Specific qualities of participant observation are the opportunity it presents to follow subjects because of their interest and not to seek a majority view. Participant observation can also help to reach certain groups or places that may be un-researchable through other techniques. It may be difficult, for example, to gather certain information from the homeless, while topics such as club culture require trust, questions of identity need time for reflection and all the above stress that how we speak of an issue is as important as what we say; for example, in the use of metaphor or slang. Interesting research that incorporates participant work includes Stollers study of West African street traders in Harlem, whether they replicate an ethnic/gender/family division of labour, how they self-regulate and co-operate/compete with one another and non-Africans and their relations to customers. Zukins study of the foodscape indicates how ethnic food is represented and delivered, the different cultural construction of front/back of restaurants, determined by language, music and role-playing (stereotypes) for the Mexican waiters and the Bangladeshi washers. Successful participant observation depends on a number of skills. First, the decision of whether and how to blend into the scene. In some situations the presence of the researcher is known, out of politeness, to ensure trust and to prevent reprisal if the researcher is suddenly discovered. Overt observation, however, that requires the constant affirmation of permission may limit access to some people or topics; yet being covert can pose difficult ethical dilemmas if research discovers police canteen racism or the environmental shortcuts of a pharmaceutical laboratory, even if these themes form a part of the research. Covert observation may deny the rights of those being researched as in the famous example of Laud Humphreys (Tearoom Trade: impersonal sex in public places, 1975) who acted as a watchqueen to observe male homosexual acts in public toilets. While Humphreys provided a useful counterpoint to sexual stereotyping of 1960s only 14 per cent of

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men self-defined as gay and there were numerous members of nonconformist churches while convincing the police not to spend resources on victimless crimes, he crossed the line by taking number plates of people who did not talk to him, ran police checks to get addresses, and interviewed men in their homes on issues such as income, race and lifestyle without disclosing his specific research intentions. The ensuing controversy resulted in acrimony and physical abuse, and one half of the faculty at Washington University Sociology Department resigning. Second, a researcher will have to decide how to become an active part of the surroundings of the research. This may involve some difficult decisions. Imagine working with the mentally ill what adjustments would you need to make? How do your weight, accent, typical topics of conversation, smoking and alcohol habits influence your status? Working with street kids in Mexico for example I will stand out in many ways, but do I have any control? If I dont wash or if I occasionally accept a cigarette will I fit in more or simply seem odd to them? If I accept a cigarette and become one of the boys, then how might I decline drugs? The kids might not wash for days or weeks, can I ever close that hygiene gap? And what about the money in my pocket, the watch on my wrist, my demeanour and general desire to ask questions of everything? How would a researcher fit into the following situations: a stock broking firm an elite private club a youth gang a drop-in centre for the mentally ill a religious organisation? The ideal role might be neutral, intelligent, sympathetic but switching on/off persona can be difficult. Third, participating and observing over a long period of time can generate vast quantities of information, but very little chance to capture that information in ways that can subsequently be used. Should the researcher use a microphone (detectable, batteries and tapes run out, and have to be transcribed) or rely on memory that may lose quotes? Crangs (1992) work on food/consumption practices meant he worked covertly as a waiter in Cambridge. This made it difficult to keep notes on his observations of his colleagues or the customers with whom unscripted conversations were not possible. He sometimes took notes on the order pad, but also kept a lot in his head and wrote notes on hands and arms, and other items around. Having to write up these impromptu notes after a seven-hour shift that finished at 1.30am meant he became nocturnal. Using verbatim transcription from memory or scratch notes is just not possible to include all the observations (including sketches, tickets, memorabilia) and interpretations of the research. Participant observation therefore may risk one of its supposed advantages the gathering of lengthy personal explanations of events, motivations and feelings. As with most qualitative approaches, writing up also tidies up the messiness and tension of the participant situation with an inevitably idealised story of engaged crosscultural or inter-group contact. As with all qualitative research the researchers personal beliefs and motivations will impinge on the collection and interpretation of material we call this positionality (awareness of this concept is called reflexivity). Did I see something and value it because I am white, middle class, male, heterosexual, agnostic, love my kids, like blues music, have friends whove

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died from drugs, dont know what is on TV before 10pm at night? Did I miss or undervalue something in street youth culture because of being influenced by cultural stereotypes or was I just having a bad day? It is always useful to be suspicious of why you understand what you understand. Activity 3.2 Choose a site in your country that you think holds some significance to answering the question: What is so public about public space? Some suggestions to help you decide: Choose a space that conforms to a notion of public space a site that is accessible, noting that some public spaces are legally private (i.e. plazas of large corporations) and some private spaces are legally public (i.e. prisons). Think about a site that possesses a well-known building or monument that may hold what we consider to be iconographic status. Think about the site in its wider context what we call the townscape, the popular views of that site from a distance, how it serves or breaks the skyline. Provide some justification for why the site you have chosen is interesting and relevant to the question. Now consider what questions you might ask about the site from a quantitative perspective. What secondary data might already be available? What specific questions might you be able to ask of this data? If you had to collect primary data, how might this be done? What types of questions would you ask and of whom? Are there any obvious constraints to the collection of these data? What would be a reasonable sample size? Would a stratified sample be useful? How would it be best to ask about the use of a site and limits to access? What types of use would you include, and what are the possibilities of ignoring some important uses and users? What other quantitative techniques could be employed to supplement a questionnaire-style approach? Now consider the same site from a qualitative perspective? How would you assess the sites iconographic importance? What sources of material would be available to understand that site, to link it to the research question? How is the site represented in popular media, paintings, literature or music, and alternative sources such as web media? How have those representations been important to debates about the relations between the place and multiculturalism; nationalism, democracy, gender, sexuality? How is the meaning of the site contested, by whom and in what ways? Would participant observation be helpful and what are the strengths and limitations of the chosen site for participation and observation? Are there gatekeepers at this site restricting access to the researcher and how might one acquire their consent? Would covert participant observation be feasible? What roles will you have to play in order to conduct participant observation at this site? Are there safety and ethical issues concerning your presence as a participant observer at this site?

A reminder of your learning outcomes

By the end of the chapter and the relevant reading and activities, you should be able to: distinguish the characteristics of quantitative and qualitative approaches to geographical enquiry identify which set of techniques is best suited to addressing which kind of geographical research issues.

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Sample examination question

Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages to using quantitative and qualitative techniques to addressing the following research question: Financial firms are increasingly deciding to locate near to airports rather than city centres.

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Section 2: Geographical views of the world

Section 2: Geographical views of the world

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Notes

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Chapter 4: Geographical views of the economy

Chapter 4: Geographical views of the economy

Essential reading
Bryson, J. and N. Henry The Global Production System: from Fordism to post-Fordism, in Daniels, P et al. An Introduction to Human Geography: . Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008). Daniels, P The Geography of the Economy, in Daniels, P et al. An Introduction to . . Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008). Dicken, P Trading Worlds, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global . Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Lee, R. Production, in Cloke, P et al. Introducing Human Geographies. (London: . Hodder Arnold, 2005). Pollard, J. The Global Financial System: world of monies, in Daniels, P et al. . Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008). Thrift, N. A Hyperactive World, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Tickel, A. Money and Finance, in Cloke, P et al. Introducing Human Geographies. . (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Wright, R. Transnational Corporations and Global Divisions of Labour, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).

Further reading
Agnew, J. and R. Grant Falling Out of the World Economy? Theorising Africa in World Trade, in Lee, R. and J. Wills (eds) Geographies of Economies. (Arnold, 1997). Allen, J., D. Massey, A. Cochrane and J. Charlesworth Rethinking the Region. (Routledge, 1998). Buzan, B. and R. Little International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations. (Oxford University Press, 2000). Dicken, P Global Shift: Transforming the World Economy. (Sage Publications Ltd, . 2003) fourth edition. Dicken, P J. Peck and A. Tickell Unpacking the Global in Lee, R. and J. Wills ., (eds) Geographies of Economies. (Arnold, 1997). Fujita M., P Krugman and A.J. Venables The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions and . International Trade. (MIT Press, 2001). Goldsmith, E. and J. Mander (eds) The Case Against the Global Economy. (Earthscan, 2001). Gordon, I. and P McCann Industrial Clusters: complexes, agglomeration and/or . social networks, Urban Studies, (37) 2000, pp.51332. Harvey, D. From managerialism to entrepreneurship: the transformation of urban governance in late capitalism, Geografiska Annaler, (71B) 1989, pp.317. Hirst, P and G. Thompson Globalisation in Question: the International Economy . and the Possibilities of Governance. (Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 1999). Jauch, H. Export-processing Zones and the Quest for Sustainable Development: Southern African Perspectives, Environment and Urbanisation, 14(1) 2002, pp.10113.

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09 Human geography Markusen, A. Fuzzy Concepts, Scanty Evidence, Policy Distance: The Case for Rigour and Policy Relevance in Critical Regional Studies, Regional Studies, (33) 1999, pp.86984. Martin, R. The New Geographical Turn in Economics: Some Critical Reflections, Cambridge Journal of Economics 23(1) 1999, pp.6591. Massey, D. Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social structures and the Geography of Production. (New York: Routledge, 1995). Perrons, D. Globalisation and Social Change: People and Places in a Divided World. (London: Routledge, 2005). Piore, M. and C. Sabel The Second Industrial Divide. (New York: Basic Books, 1984). Rodrik, D. The New Global Economy and Developing Countries: Making Openness Work. (Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1999). Sachs, J.D. and F Larrain Macroeconomics in the Global Economy. (New York; . London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993). Scott, A.J. (ed.) Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Shaw, M. Theory of the Global State: Globality as an Unfinished Revolution. (Oxford; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000) . Smith, N. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). Standing, G. Global Feminisation Through Flexible Labour: A Theme Revisited, World Development, 27(3) 1999, pp.583602. Stiglitz, J. Globalisation and its Discontents. (London: Penguin, 2002). Storper, M. The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. (Guilford Press, 1997). Sunley, P Marshallian Industrial Districts: The Case of the Lancashire Cotton . Industry in the Inter-War Years, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, (17) 1992, pp.306320. Wright, M. From Protests to Politics: Sex Work, Womens Worth and Ciudad Jurez Modernity, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (94) 2004, pp.36986.

Aims of the chapter

This chapter is about how we understand the location of manufacturing, the flow of goods through trade and the movement of finance. It outlines how we might understand processes of internationalisation and globalisation, and whether the world is becoming simultaneously more global, regional and local. We consider both traditional economic geography and the emergence of so-called new economic geography.

Learning outcomes
By the end of the chapter and relevant reading, you should be able to: understand the intellectual development of economic geography appreciate the key concepts and current debates in economic geography describe and critique trends in the processes of globalisation, regionalisation and localism.

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Introduction
I pick up just about any recently purchased household item and ask one of my children where is this made?. China is their reply and they are usually right. In less than 20 years China has moved from a country obsessed with autarkic (self-sufficient) growth and distribution, to one driven by external oriented growth and less concern for distribution. This shift has been met by both excitement, as companies rush to manufacture in China, to buy goods made there and increasingly to sell them, as well as worry for the impact on global trade and finance. Growth in the Chinese economy has been around 10 per cent per annum for a decade. In 2005 the US Secretary for Trade visited Beijing to ask the Chinese to export less to the US, to recognise that the US trade deficit of $70 billion per month was driving down the price of the dollar. He met a frosty reception and the answer that the US should produce more of what it consumes. US politicians have since attempted to impose trade restrictions in some goods, citing the undervalued Yuan as the reason for Chinas success, but also to protect jobs in inefficient domestic manufacturing. I note attempted because talking tough and acting have been limited both by the oversight of the WTO, but more pragmatically because China has been steadily buying US debt and assets; China is now the largest creditor to the US. Through buying assets the Chinese maintain a higher value of the dollar, preventing the US from exporting, keeping inflation down and interest rates low, thus fuelling the demand for credit and consumer goodswhich are imported from China. If the US is too tough China may call in debts, thereby influencing US interest rates, albeit at the expense of the value of assets. A global China would appear to be teaching a protectionist US a lesson in neo-liberalism.

Simple location models

The vignette of the economic landscape described above seems a far cry from the foundational texts of economic geography. Here I want to note three texts. First, Johann von Thnens The Isolated State published in 1826. Von Thnen was influenced by neo-classical economics and therefore incorporated the assumptions of rational economic actors who attempt to maximise profit, possess perfect knowledge, face no restrictions to trade and occupy a flat (isotropic) plain. In his model, von Thnen applied the idea of marginal productivity to determine an idealised pattern of agricultural land use. He considered the key variables to be the rent of land (R), the yield (Y), production costs (C), the market price of the crop (P), distance to market (M) and transport costs (F) to derive the formula: R = Y(p c) Yfm In applying this formula to agriculture, von Thnen made a number of additional specific assumptions, most important being that the area was surrounded by wilderness (to prevent trade being outward to a competing market), soil quality is constant and there are no roads. Consequently, land use is a function of transport costs and land rent. What von Thnen called Locational rent (gain per unit area) decreased with distance from the market, but the price of a commodity is calculated by locational rent plus transport costs and fixed production costs. In this model Locational rent is also land value, as it is the maximum amount the farmer could pay (but would prefer not to) for land after costs. Moving out from the market, Von Thnen concluded that it is only economical to cultivate certain crops, beyond which the cost of land is above value, transport costs increase or other crops have higher yields or lower costs.

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As there are no roads to distort transport costs, the model produces a pattern of concentric rings of agricultural activity. Nearest to the market is dairy production, vegetables and fruit, followed by timber for fuel and building, followed by extensive crops such as grain that are light and can be transported over greater distances reducing their marginal cost, and lastly, animal husbandry. The second text is Alfred Webers Theory of the Location of Industry (1909). Weber was interested in where industries would locate and suggested that the decision would be determined by the least cost location according to transport and labour costs. Transportation costs were a function of the weight of the commodity being transported and distance. Unlike agriculture that would be organised into zones, industries would locate at points. To find these points would require an analysis of what Weber termed the Material Index the ratio of weight of raw materials to the finished product. Using the Index Weber distinguished between Weight Losing Industries, where the weight of the final product is less than the weight of the constituent raw materials, and Weight Gaining Industries where final product is heavier than raw material inputs. An example of the former is furniture manufacture which takes place close to the raw material rather than the market. An example of weight gaining is food processing (and Weber discounted water as a raw material) which is mostly located close to demand. The Material Index, however, would only be one determinant of location. The other was labour, the cost of which might counteract transport. Thus, decision-making will need to consider the costs of labour and skill requirements. Unskilled labour is available everywhere and mostly cheap, whereas skilled labour is more scarce and expensive. Weber did not explore in depth the effect of agglomeration (or spatial clustering) on decision-making. He recognised that clustering permitted firms to take advantage of internal and external economies; the latter are the attributes of an area that the firm does not directly have to support. A software company, for example, will benefit from the nearby location of IT support firms but too many software companies in a cluster will raise costs giving an incentive for deglomeration. This idea of agglomeration is developed more fully by Alfred Marshall in Principles of Economics (1890), the third foundation stone to Locational analysis in economic geography. Marshall identified three principles of agglomeration. First, associated industries provide each other with key inputs and markets for specific goods, encouraging a clustering. Second, firms are drawn to locations that have relevant skilled labour where they are less likely to experience labour shortages; firms are likely to remain even as other costs change as training is a long-term process across generations. Third, agglomeration provides knowledge spillovers, or a positive technology externality in the jargon, whereby firms benefit from learning and sharing information and new technologies. Marshalls contribution to Economics is to move the optic from the individual firm or sector to consider the internal and external economies. Based on the above three principles, Marshall believed that positive economies of scale were achievable without large factories with an in-house division of labour. Rather, economies could be attained from the industry instead of the firm, leaving smaller more versatile firms to innovate and avoid bureaucracy. Small firms in districts of competitors supported by subsidiary suppliers, with a natural skill base instilled through generations, and where trust is high would be more efficient than large single firms. As Sunley (1992) has argued by revisiting one of Marshalls exemplars, the Lancashire cotton industry, Marshalls belief in an evolutionary or organic

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view of the world (informed by Herbert Spencer in particular) led him to exaggerate the dynamism of industrial districts. As Sunley notes, the cotton industry that at the time of Marshalls writing was still ascendant had by the 1930s all but disappeared in parts of Lancashire as demand shifted, internal competition acted against co-operation and labour militancy rose. We return to Marshall and agglomeration later in the chapter. From this short history lesson we can identify a number of dominant features in the early, and later, study of economic geography. First, the underlying intellectual framework for economic geography was neo-classical economics, with its conventional suite of examples and drive to find points of equilibrium. Second, study is organised around the notion of geographic scale. In the work of von Thnen, Weber and Marshall, scale is mostly local or regional; there is only one market and so on. Although it is not explicitly ignored, there is no discussion of a global space economy. Third, location decisions are determined by weight, whereas the contemporary economy in some parts of the world is increasingly understood as weightless based on the formation and holding of information and ideas, and the speed at which decisions are made.

Structural models: from Fordism to new industrial division of labour

The idea of an industrial division of labour far predates the symbolic starting point of Fordism that most observers consider to be 1913 when Henry Ford launched the assembly-line method of production in Detroit. Josiah Wedgewood had already divided the production of pottery into seven constituent parts in order to attain both a consistency of design and increased efficiency. Adam Smith had famously recorded in The Wealth of Nations that 10 people each undertaking different tasks could produce 48,000 pins in a day whereas the same people making pins individually would produce 20. Nevertheless, Ford took the production-line method to a new level, reducing the time taken to produce a Model T from 728 worker-minutes in 1912 to 93 in 1913 (Bryson and Henry, 2008). Fordism was clearly driven by a capitalist mode of production, to enhance the return on capital through increasing the surplus from labour, and therefore profit to the investor. It should be noted that while Fordism overlapped with the huge increase on consumption enjoyed by households, at least in the developed world, from the 1920s to the 1970s, it paid little attention by contemporary standards to the detail of consumer preferences. Indeed, Fordisms emphasis on mass production required relatively homogenous goods any colour so long as its black in the phrase (incorrectly) attributed to Henry T Ford and could not cope with individual taste or cultural more. The saving grace of Fordism, however, appeared to be the improvement in worker conditions. Largescale production provided a critical mass of workers whose demands for welfare had to be respected, while the division of labour gave any one point in the production line the power to disrupt output as a whole. Particularly by the 1950s there emerged what Ian Roxborough once called a labour aristocracy, blue collar, unionised, mostly male workers, well-remunerated and difficult to fire. Fordism, supported by Keynesian economic policy, secured the post-war boom, marked by significant economic growth from the 1940s to approximately 1973, increases in social welfare and consumption. By the early 1970s, however, manufacturing in many developed countries was in severe decline, a trend that continued through the 1980s. In the United

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Kingdom, the steel industry that had employed 165,000 people in 1980 employed fewer than 40,000 in 1999, clothing and textiles that employed 840,000 in 1980 had about 215,000 in 1999. It was a similar story for coal mining, shipbuilding, light and heavy engineering, some parts of the chemical industry, car and truck manufacture, and across much of Europe, the United States and Canada (Daniels, 2008). Economic geographers were concerned in evidence of uneven development that in the structural theoretical frameworks popular from the 1960s laid the blame at the relation between capital and labour power (Smith, 1990). In Social Justice and the City (1973) David Harvey began to show that capital and labour did not attain an equilibrium state but were in a condition of constant flux. The problem of capital accumulation was partially addressed by a spatial fix whereby capital was switched into and out from the built environment, and to different locales for production. This latter restructuring involved a shift from Fordist forms of production to smaller and more footloose plants, responsive to changes in the market, able to take advantage of incentives in newly-industrialised regions, deregulated labour markets allowing for multifunctional workers to rotate jobs according to production quotas, and more involvement of marketing (Shaw, 2002). Flexible accumulation has coined terms to capture the faster, more responsive production systems as lean production, smoothing to suggest the production of different goods in a single day, and the operation of low inventories as just-in-time. Flexible accumulation also involved moving certain production facilities abroad, and notably to developing countries. By the late 1990s almost 50 per cent of manufacturing jobs were located in the developing world, and over 60 per cent of developing country exports to the North were of manufactured goods, which represented a 1,200 per cent increase since 1960. In particular, we witness the rise of the transnational or multinational corporation (TNC/MNC) with the power to co-ordinate and control operations in more than one country, and by the late 1990s just 500 TNCs account for over 70 per cent of world trade (Dicken, 2003). These relocation or expansion decisions were aided by the shift in industrialisation policies in developing countries towards greater export orientation. To some extent this export orientation and deregulation was brought about by the conditionality of the World Bank and IMF following the debt crisis although some analysts express concern that Export Processing Zones (EPZs) are being used to muddle through and avoid economy-wide trade liberalisation (Rodrik, 1999). A particular feature of this shift are Export Processing Zones. The first EPZ was established in Shannon, Eire, in 1956, and by 1975 there were 31 EPZs in 18 countries, by 1987 260 in 40 countries. Today, almost all countries have at least one EPZ, with well-known examples in the Caribbean, North Africa (notably Tunisia and Morocco), Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Mauritius. The best example, however, remains the USMexican border where a free trade area was set up in 1965, allowing firms to set up branch plants (maquiladora) within five kilometres of the border, with special labour and fiscal laws. The zone was gradually extended and in preparation for NAFTA (operation from 1994) included the whole of Mexico. The growth of the maquiladora is shown in Table 4.1. By 1999 maquiladora accounted for 27 per cent of manufacturing employment in Mexico and in 2002 maquiladora were responsible for almost 50 per cent of total exports (and 35 per cent total imports). Maquiladora accounted for 15 per cent of GDP while foreign trade generally , increased from 13 per cent to just under 60 per cent of GDP between 1980

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and 2002, and manufacturing exports rose from 23 per cent to 87 per cent of exports over the same period. However, when in 2000, NAFTA rules removed customs duties employment fell between 2000 and 2002, and 88 per cent of exports went to the US. Year 1966 1975 1980 1985 1987 1991 1994 1997 2000 2002* *JanuaryApril Table 4.1: Mexico: Maquiladora, 19662002 (Source: cited in Gilbert, A.G. The urban revolution, in Gwynne, R.N. and C. Kay (eds) Latin America transformed. (Edward Arnold, 2004) pp.93116.) EPZs operate within a partial free trade regime but under conditions of exception different from the regulations that determine the rest of a countrys economy. The host nation benefits from a rapid increase in its manufacturing base without having to provide the means for this production over a large area. Job creation and the potential stimulation of the local and national economy are further advantages. Conversely, firms in EPZs benefit from the availability of skilled, cheap labour, lower employment and environmental standards. As Wright (2004) shows for the Mexico case, these competitive standards have also relied on the feminisation of the workforce that has involved a sexualisation and infantilisation process, whereby women are represented as in training and as socially and sexually unreliable. Useful articles on the labour conditions in EPZs or similar arrangements are Jauch (2002), Perrons (2005) and Standing (1999). Instead of having Fordist plants in different countries producing goods for that country or region in a relatively autonomous fashion, TNCs increasing networked plants so that parts produced in different countries were assembled in another, and made available for global sale. The manner of TNC presence also changed, with Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) the dominant form of entry and the setting up of subsidiaries organised through an array of joint ventures, strategic alliances and production consortia. The proliferation of new networks of corporate affiliates means the traditional structure of the firm has become blurred. This new production regime was called a New Industrial Division of Labour (NIDL). To Massey (1995) the NIDL describes the new possibilities of disaggregating the productive process and the reallocation of each part according to comparative advantage determined by the price of labour. From a neo-Marxist or structuralist perspective, the profitability of single economic sectors, new work practices and investment restructure production make Companies 57 454 620 760 1,125 1,914 2,085 2,661 3,590 n.a. Employees 4,000 67,000 120,000 212,000 305,000 467,000 583,000 888,000 1,285,000 1,066,000 Foreign exchange earnings (US$m) n.a. 454 773 1,450 1,598 4,134 5,803 7,593 13,523 n.a.
Note: n.a. = not available.

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certain geographical areas more attractive (Massey, 1995). To some extent, however, research has tended to regard flexible accumulation as multidimensional leading to the criticism that few studies unpack the dimensions and scales at which we can assess flexible accumulation. In some studies, it is production processes that are seen as specialised and flexible, while for others the notion applies to firms, for others it applies to workers and others to whole regions (Markusen, 1999, p.874). To Harvey (1989), however, the shift from Fordism to flexible accumulation can be seen simply as capitalisms conventional response to crisis involving the devaluation of labour power as the instinctive response to falling profits.

From international division of labour to globalisation

Peter Dicken (2003) has argued that the growing strength and spread of TNCs, increased international trade and international economic agreements marked a shallow integration, whereas the globalisation of the latter twentieth century represents a deep integration. This new condition is marked by a capacity to work as a unit in real time through what Harvey (1989) calls timespace compression or what Ohmae (1995) refers to as accelerating interdependence that produce a global space economy.
Todays economy is genuinely borderless. Information, capital and innovation flow all over the world at top speed, enabled by technology and fuelled by consumers desires for access to the best and least expensive products. (Ohmae, 1995)

To Sachs and Larrain (1993) globalisation must encompass the idea of macroeconomic unification, which means that the world is now a single economy in the macroeconomic sense; the principal determinants of income and employment can now only be understood at a global level. But others have contended that in a global economy it is especially difficult to differentiate between the economic and the social as social conditions are less of a barrier to economic transaction (as financial services attest) while economic decisions in one location can have quickly transmitted impacts on social relations, from crime, drugs, fashion and beliefs, in another (Perrons, 2005). It seems necessary, therefore, to distinguish between economic and political globalisation. A further distinction is between the globalisation of markets and the globalisation of production. Deep integration would imply the globalisation of both trade and production, but also a shift in the interaction capacity from one of linkages across nation states to the expansion of global capitalism (Buzan and Little, 2000). Let us look, first, at the evidence for and experience of the globalisation of trade and, second, the globalisation of finance.

The globalisation of trade

First, it is clear that international trade has increased dramatically. From 1945 trade has increased more than twice as fast as GDP; exports grew on average by six per cent annually from 1950 to 2000. To a large degree this increase is due to the dismantling of barriers to trade, import tariffs and quotas under General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) rules from 1947, the rounds of trade negotiations but especially the Uruguay round (19861993) that culminated in the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995 and its extension to include countries such as China. In 1940, the average tariff for a manufactured good was 40 per cent of its price and by 1995 it was four per cent (Dicken, 2003, p.93). Figure 4.1 shows the trend for trade from 1970 to 2000.

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7,000,000

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Figure 4.1: Total world trade, 19702000 (Source: UNCTAD, 2002) Second, however, non-tariff barriers such as local-content and rules of origin, quotas, import-licensing policies, have increased, especially in sectors such as agriculture, energy and steel. Countries have also been accused of manipulating exchange rates to dump goods fingers are usually pointed at China by the US generally and by the European Union over textiles and shoes. It would seem that whatever the position of growth theory, that economic liberalisation and increases in trade are likely to reduce regional disparities, many lobbyists and governments believe the evidence that trade leads to greater concentration of economic activity and greater polarisation. The present debate is whether international trade is organised in such a way as to favour rich nations (see chapters in Goldsmith and Mander, 2001). If so, then the trade regime is international at best, and not a global space economy. Third, we should recognise that some authors are sceptical as to the timing and shape of globalisation. Perhaps the best-known critique is offered by Hirst and Thompson who agree with the general assertion that the world economy has internationalised in its basic dynamism, it is dominated by uncontrollable market forces, and it has as its principal economic actors and major agents of change truly transnational corporations, that owe allegiance to no nation state and locate wherever in the globe market advantage dictates (1999, p.17). But, they point out that the world economy was more open and more integrated between 1870 and 1913, when an open regulatory framework dominated, short- and long-run capital movements were unsupervised, and citizenship was freely granted to immigrants. Hirst and Thompson argue that under these conditions, markets linked a growing share of world resources and output, exports outgrew domestic output in the majority of capitalist countries, and the level of migration of labour was unprecedented. The position argues that the world today is more a triad around the North American, European and Japanese economies. There is indeed some support for this view; in fact data show that in 1911 exports accounted for 12 per cent of GDP and in 1950 only seven per cent, but the percentage increased to 20 per cent by 2002. Fourth, we need to consider the tension between globalisation, regionalism and localism. As a prominent area of commentary and study in the economic geography literature this point justifies more attention than the previous three and will be discussed in the final section of this chapter as the new economic geography.

2000

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Global finance and foreign direct investment

The past 30 years has seen a staggering increase in the quantity and speed of money that circulates the globe. Any figure given here is likely to be wrong almost immediately but a conservative estimate would put bank holding of foreign assets at $7 trillion or one per cent of global GDP Of this . figure about $1 trillion is moved daily and in 2000 the international stock market activity was about $1.2 trillion per day or 50 times the total value of annual international trade (Thrift, 2002). A great deal of this trade is the result of portfolio investment, an investment with the sole purpose of realising a profit, usually in the short term, and a large part of it conducted through emerging markets in places such as South Africa, Malaysia, Mexico and Chile. Much of this increase in global flow of money is due to the rise of institutional investors such as pension funds and the securitisation of funds (allowing firms to borrow directly from the markets rather than through banks). US mutual and pension funds invested $6070 billion per annum in developing country financial markets during the early to mid-1990s. The second type of investment is direct investment that captures funds moved for the purpose of a corporate takeover or for the acquisition of new plant and machinery in a company. Within this category is Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). From 1982 to 1994 the level of global FDI grew fourfold, and doubled as a percentage of global GDP to nine per cent. Through the mid-1990s, FDI growth levels accelerated mainly through an increase of 19 per cent to $400 billion in the value of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As). For OECD countries, M&As rose to 86 per cent of the value of inward FDI by the end of the 1980s. By the late 1990s FDI was growing at an average annual rate almost three times higher than that of trade and four times greater than world output. The 1990s are thus characterised as a decade in which international production by TNCs, financed through FDI, gradually began to replace trade as the mode through which economies were interlinked: a considerable proportion of this FDI is a transfer from one part of a TNC to subsidiaries elsewhere (data are from UNCTAD). As with the data for global trade, the flows of FDI are dominated by just a few countries and regions: approximately 75 per cent of FDI is within or between the US, European Union and Japan (Dicken, 2003, p.47). Similar to trade, Africa appears to be Falling Out of the World Economy (Agnew and Grant, 1997). A crucial difference, however, is the impact on financial markets of the performance of emerging markets, as witnessed by the knock-on impacts of the financial crises in Asia, Russia and Brazil in 1998 and Argentina in 20024. The Mexican tequila crisis of 199495 indicates the cause and consequence. The crisis itself was triggered by the realisation that the government was supporting the price of the peso, cutting foreign exchange reserves from US$30 billion in February 1994 to US$12 billion in early December, at the same time as domestic short-term dollar-denominated debt held in government bonds had reached US$29 billion. The government had to devalue the peso, putting pressure on bonds and raising interest rates. Mexico teetered on losing its status as an emerging market and neo-liberal success story, and becoming once more a rogue debtor. Fearful that Mexico was just the start of another debt or liquidity crisis, and with a lot of US voters with pension funds geared into high-yield emerging markets, President Clinton put through a $52 billion loan guarantee, most of which was used in just six months of 1995. As Thomas Friedman, writing in the New York Times noted:

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In todays intertwined global market, Mexico is home. There is far more American industrial investment and mutual-fund investment in Mexico today than there is in our own home state of New Mexico. And the economic collapse of Mexico would damage the US, Latin America and Canada far more than the bankruptcy of New Mexico. To some extent, home is where the wallet is, and right now, if you check your pension fund or mutual fund, you will find your wallet is spread from Toronto to Tierra del Fuego. (1995)

Most Mexicans, of course, will point out that the real pain was not felt in Miami or Phoenix but in Mexico itself. The governments savings protection fund purchased $100 billion of overdue loans at rates favourable to the banks, that then became risk-averse, drying up domestic credit to small-scale savers and borrowers who had never been part of the original credit boom.
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Figure 4.2: Total investment flows 19702000 (Source: UNCTAD, 2002)

New economic geography: regionalism and global production clusters

Against the idea that globalisation should mean that spatiality is dominated by the global scale, a proposition seemingly confirmed by the weaker nation-state, we can observe the rise of the region and of the local as key geographical scales. Whereas conventional economics assumes that, all things being equal, spatial equilibrium will be achieved as capital seeks high profits and low rents while labour chases higher wages, in reality economic activity is highly clustered and spatial dis-equilibrium is the norm. In making this observation, geographers have pointed out that cities in particular play an important role and cannot be regarded as generic points on an isotropic plain, some are more attractive than others for specific activities; in the jargon, factor prices alone are insufficient to explain the location of economic activity in the real world. The new economic geography then considers the costs of economic interactions across distance and the effect on the geographical distribution of economic activity. In becoming interested in clusters, nodes and agglomerations the new economic geography is returning to many of the ideas put forward by Alfred Marshal a century ago. Economic geography has refocused on the relations between internal and external economies of scale; that is, the economies attained within a firm or from factors outside the firm but available in the

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locale or region. As such; questions have been asked about what is so new (see Martin, 1999). In defence of the new we can observe that economic geographers pay more attention than their predecessors to the role of the state, in its declining role as an agent of redistribution, meaning that regional economic differences today are likely to be left unchecked compared to the past (Storper, 1997). The state has also exerted considerable leverage by shifting the behaviour of local (city) governments away from social service provision (schools, housing, hospitals) to an entrepreneurial boosterism emphasising place marketing (Harvey, 1989). The apotheosis is the claimed status of a global city (see Chapter 10). Two trends stand out: regionalism and localism. The organisation of proximate countries into regional trade blocs has appeared as a direct consequence of trade liberalisation (Buzan and Weaver, 1998). Most countries around the world are members of regional trade agreements, customs unions, free trade areas or other preferential arrangements. In the last 50 years, GATT and then the WTO have recorded over 200 Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs), 33 new regional agreements between 1990 and 1994 alone and 150 presently in force. The best known are the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation, the Common Market of the South (Mercosur), the AustraliaNew Zealand Closer Economic Relations Agreement and the Southern African Development Community. These agreements indicate that nation-based political structures remain important even as economies internationalise or globalise. They also suggest that the rules that govern liberalisation are asymmetrical, obliging some countries to eliminate trade barriers while creating new ones, with particular bias against developing countries (Stiglitz, 2002, p.6). Over one-half of all trade in manufactured goods therefore is between the small number of countries within the global core; almost 70 per cent within or between the EU, ASEAN and NAFTA. The difficult question is whether regionalisation lies in opposition to globalisation or whether regionalisation and globalisation are mutually reinforcing? Do regional arrangements for example bring economic integration closer? In 1996, the WTO General Council created the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements to assess whether regional groups are consistent with WTO rules and to examine how regional arrangements might affect the multilateral trading system. Indeed the WTO believes that regional and multilateral integration initiatives are complements rather than alternatives in the pursuit of more open trade. The logic is twofold. At one level, while regionalism has meant relative declines in inter bloc trade, these have been more than matched by increases in intra bloc trade. At another level, under GATT and then WTO rules, regional agreements remove tariff and non-tariff within the membership group while no new restrictions can be set up for non-members. The other trend is towards localism, or more specifically to production clusters. The argument runs that the disintegration of large Fordist units and the rise of smaller specialised locally-networked operations based on flexible working practices, a greater reliance on innovation and skills, the elimination of time in supply, creates a tendency towards spatial re-agglomeration in the form of clusters, functional urban regions or cityregions, and New Industrial Districts (NIDs) (Fujita et al., 2001). These neo-Marshallian nodes imply a return to place, a dependence on location proximity between different agents involved in any production circuit.

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Agglomeration creates or reinforces an atmosphere that nurtures the knowledge, communication and innovation structures required for retaining competitive advantage in a global economy (Gordon and McCann, 2000). Best known is the work of Piore and Sabel (1984) whose study of the successful expansion of mature industries in the Emilio Romagna region in Italy argued that NIDs owe their success to the role of small, innovative firms, embedded within a regional co-operative system of industrial governance, which enables them to adapt and flourish despite globalising tendencies. Scott (2000) studied a system of global city regions based on the clustering of high-tech firms in technopoles such as Silicon Valley. These regions offer distinct character over other locations and become embedded in a global-city-centric form of capitalism, better connected to other regions than to the state or nation. Contrary to the idea that reductions in the cost of transportation and communication would lead to a more diffuse pattern of location, regions have become closely tied to clustered flexible networks of firms (Allen et al., 1998; Scott, 2000). To understand agglomerations under conditions of trade liberalisation requires spatial variables for forward (access to markets) and backward (suppliers) linkages to be introduced. The argument is that under liberalisation firms can sell to external markets and have less need to locate in the largest domestic market. Firms will therefore disperse to locations with good access to foreign markets such as borders and ports; they will cluster but in a wider range of locations. This work introduces a new perspective on the regional analysis through the interpretation of factors such as distance to markets, trade barriers, wages and infrastructure. Among the most important factors highlighted, and which go against the arguments from the International Division of Labour theorists, is the relevance of low wages in driving the relocation (migration) decisions of firms from rich to poor countries. As Fujita et al. argue:
low wages in the South are not enough to attract manufacturing because of the lack of sufficient forward and backward linkages. Eventually, however, further reductions in transport costs move the world into a globalisation phase. The value of proximity to customer and supplier firms diminishes as transport costs fall, and so the sustainable gap between North and South narrows. (2001, p.254)

According to Fujita et al. (2001), agglomerations are formed and survive because of the economic benefits derived from interaction, in which spatial concentration itself creates the favourable economic environment that supports further and continued concentration. Producers choose locations that have good access to large markets and to suppliers of goods that they or their workers require. A place that already has a concentration of producers tends to offer a large market, a good supply of inputs and consumer goods (some of which are made by producers already there). Because of what are essentially backward and forward linkages spatial concentrations of production tend to persist once they are established. Again we can turn to Markusen (1999) for a coherent critique. Markusen argues that there are different types of industrial districts, or sticky places, which have demonstrated resilience in the post-Second World War period in advanced industrialised countries. This stickiness connotes both the ability to attract as well as to maintain productive investments, and therefore it applies to both new and established regions, an important dimension in an era of huge shifts in the geography of industrial production. Based on an inductive analysis of the more successful metropolitan regions in the US,

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Markusen shows that structures and dynamic paths are quite different from those captured in NID formulation. Contrary to the emphasis on small firms in NID formulation, these alternative models demonstrate the continued power of the state and/or TNCs to shape and anchor industrial districts. This power provides the glue that makes it difficult for smaller producers to leave, encouraging them to stay and expand, and attracting newcomers into the region. Markusens models exhibit greater propensities for networking across district lines, rather than within, and claims that industrial clusters have a greater tendency than in the NID formulation to be exogenously driven and thus focused on external policy issues. My proposition, which you might wish to compare to views held by authors in the recommended literature, is that we should understand globalisation as a process, and therefore a deep integration and interaction capacity might not be with us right now. We seem, however, to have gone beyond internationalisation, as a simple extension of economic activities across national boundaries implying partial market integration. Production, trade and the movement of finance are freer and more global in the past, even if they are not yet fully global. That is, globalisation remains uneven and thus an opportunity for study by geographers. Activity 4.1 Thinking of the country where you live, what have been the debates about the impacts of economic globalisation? Has economic globalisation been regarded as positive or negative, and who or which organisations hold these positions? In your opinion, what is the evidence for positive or negative forms of economic globalisation in your country? Thinking back to Chapter 3, think how you might devise a research project from either a qualitative or quantitative perspective to investigate the evidence and impacts of economic globalisation.

A reminder of your learning outcomes

By the end of the chapter and the relevant reading and activities, you should be able to: understand the intellectual development of economic geography appreciate the key concepts and current debates in economic geography describe and critique trends in the processes of globalisation, regionalisation and localism.

Sample examination question

Compare and contrast the insights for industrial location offered by simple location models and the so-called new economic geography. Use examples to illustrate your answer.

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