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

Human geography
G.A. Jones
GY1009, 2790009

2011

Human geography
G.A. Jones
GY1009, 2790009

2011

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

This subject guide is for a Level 1 course (also known as a 100 course) offered as part of the University of London International Programmes in Economics, Management, Finance and the Social Sciences. This is equivalent to Level 4 within the Framework for Higher Education Qualications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (FHEQ). For more information about the University of London International Programmes undergraduate study in Economics, Management, Finance and the Social Sciences, see: www.londoninternational.ac.uk

This guide was prepared for the University of London International Programmes by: Dr Gareth A. Jones, Senior Lecturer in Development Geography, London School of Economics and Political Science. 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.

University of London International Programmes Publications Office Stewart House 32 Russell Square London WC1B 5DN United Kingdom Website: www.londoninternational.ac.uk

Published by: University of London University of London 2009 Reprinted with minor revisions 2011 The University of London asserts copyright over all material in this subject guide except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher. We make every effort to contact copyright holders. If you think we have inadvertently used your copyright material, please let us know.

Contents

Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Aims ............................................................................................................................. 2 Learning outcomes ........................................................................................................ 2 Structure of the guide .................................................................................................... 2 Reading advice .............................................................................................................. 3 Online study resources ................................................................................................... 5 Syllabus......................................................................................................................... 7 Examination advice........................................................................................................ 8 List of acronyms used in this guide ................................................................................. 9 Section 1: Human geography as a discipline ........................................................ 11 Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge .......... 13 Essential reading ......................................................................................................... 13 Further reading............................................................................................................ 13 Aims of the chapter ..................................................................................................... 14 Learning outcomes ...................................................................................................... 14 Visualising geographical knowledge............................................................................. 14 Columbus, Mercator and the whole earth..................................................................... 16 Sir Halford Mackinders The Pivot of History ................................................................ 20 The London Underground ............................................................................................ 22 Maps and geographical warfare ................................................................................... 24 Eclectic atlases ............................................................................................................ 26 Concluding comment................................................................................................... 27 A reminder of your learning outcomes.......................................................................... 27 Sample examination question ...................................................................................... 27 Chapter 2: The history of geographical ideas ...................................................... 29 Essential reading ......................................................................................................... 29 Further reading............................................................................................................ 29 Aims of the chapter .................................................................................................... 31 Learning outcomes ..................................................................................................... 31 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 31 War and Empire........................................................................................................... 32 Popular geography ...................................................................................................... 34 Environmental determinism ......................................................................................... 35 The quantitative revolution .......................................................................................... 37 Behavioural and humanist geography .......................................................................... 39 Radical geography, structuralism and Marxism ............................................................ 40 The cultural turn, post-modernism and post-structuralism ........................................... 42 Afterword, afterward ................................................................................................... 44 A reminder of your learning outcomes ......................................................................... 45 Sample examination questions ..................................................................................... 45 Chapter 3: Geographical methods........................................................................ 47 Essential reading ......................................................................................................... 47 Further reading ........................................................................................................... 47 Works cited ................................................................................................................. 48 Aims of the chapter ..................................................................................................... 48 Learning outcomes ..................................................................................................... 49 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 49
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Quantitative methods .................................................................................................. 51 Sample size ................................................................................................................. 51 Secondary data............................................................................................................ 52 Question bias and researcher control ........................................................................... 53 Interpretation .............................................................................................................. 54 Indices ........................................................................................................................ 55 Qualitative methods .................................................................................................... 56 Reading landscapes .................................................................................................... 56 Intention and meaning ................................................................................................ 58 Contested meanings .................................................................................................... 60 Landscape, place and identity ...................................................................................... 62 Qualitative approaches and rigour ............................................................................... 65 A reminder of your learning outcomes ......................................................................... 67 Sample examination question ...................................................................................... 68 Section 2: Geographical views of the world ........................................................ 69 Chapter 4: Geographical views of the economy .................................................. 71 Essential reading ......................................................................................................... 71 Further reading............................................................................................................ 71 Aims of the chapter .................................................................................................... 72 Learning outcomes ..................................................................................................... 72 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 73 Simple location models ................................................................................................ 73 Structural models: from Fordism to new industrial division of labour ............................. 75 From international division of labour to globalisation ................................................... 78 New economic geography: regionalism and global production clusters........................ 81 A reminder of your learning outcomes ......................................................................... 84 Sample examination question ...................................................................................... 84 Chapter 5: Different structures of world polity ................................................... 85 Essential reading ......................................................................................................... 85 Further reading............................................................................................................ 85 Aims of the chapter .................................................................................................... 86 Learning outcomes ..................................................................................................... 86 Geopolitics: definition, rise and decline ........................................................................ 86 The Cold War: realist geopolitics .................................................................................. 89 Post-Cold War: a new geopolitical disorder................................................................... 95 Critical geopolitics ....................................................................................................... 99 A reminder of your learning outcomes ....................................................................... 102 Sample examination question .................................................................................... 102 Section 3: Resources, population and sustainability .......................................... 103 Chapter 6: Environment, resources and sustainability ....................................... 105 Essential reading ....................................................................................................... 105 Further reading.......................................................................................................... 105 Aims of the chapter .................................................................................................. 106 Learning outcomes .................................................................................................... 106 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 106 Resource scarcity and the pessimists ......................................................................... 107 Population crisis, what crisis? ..................................................................................... 111 Sustainable development ........................................................................................... 112 A new scarcity and deep ecology ............................................................................... 115 Global warming and new questions on science .......................................................... 118
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Contents

A reminder of your learning outcomes........................................................................ 120 Sample examination question .................................................................................... 120 Chapter 7: Population movements ..................................................................... 121 Essential reading ....................................................................................................... 121 Further reading.......................................................................................................... 121 Aims of the chapter .................................................................................................. 122 Learning outcomes .................................................................................................... 122 Theories and patterns of migration ............................................................................. 122 International migration, refugee regime and diaspora ................................................. 125 The changing policy response .................................................................................... 130 Integration and assimilation....................................................................................... 131 A reminder of your learning outcomes........................................................................ 135 Sample examination question .................................................................................... 135 Section 4: The geography of cities ..................................................................... 137 Chapter 8: The geography of cities .................................................................... 139 Essential reading ....................................................................................................... 139 Further reading.......................................................................................................... 139 Aims of the chapter .................................................................................................. 140 Learning outcomes ................................................................................................... 140 Anti-urbanism and utopianism ................................................................................... 140 The Chicago School: morphology and urban systems .................................................. 142 Modernism and planning ........................................................................................... 143 From suburbs to postmodern city of bits ..................................................................... 146 Community and gentrification .................................................................................... 148 The death of public space .......................................................................................... 150 The gated community ................................................................................................ 152 A reminder of your learning outcomes........................................................................ 153 Sample examination question .................................................................................... 153 Chapter 9: An urbanising world.......................................................................... 155 Further reading.......................................................................................................... 155 Aims of the chapter ................................................................................................... 155 Learning outcomes .................................................................................................... 156 A new world urban geography .................................................................................. 156 Over-urbanisation, mega-cities and urban primacy ..................................................... 160 The informal sector and self-help ............................................................................... 165 Contemporary images................................................................................................ 169 A reminder of your learning outcomes........................................................................ 171 Sample examination questions ................................................................................... 171 Chapter 10: Global cities .................................................................................... 173 Essential reading ....................................................................................................... 173 Further reading.......................................................................................................... 173 Aims of the chapter ................................................................................................... 174 Learning outcomes .................................................................................................... 174 Definitions of global and world cities ......................................................................... 174 Critique ..................................................................................................................... 180 A reminder of your learning outcomes........................................................................ 183 Sample examination question .................................................................................... 183

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Section 5: Global interactions ............................................................................ 185 Chapter 11: Geographies of development ......................................................... 187 Essential reading ....................................................................................................... 187 Further reading.......................................................................................................... 187 Aims of the chapter ................................................................................................... 188 Learning outcomes .................................................................................................... 188 The invention of development and the underdeveloped world................................... 188 The geopolitics of development: a first moment of refusal........................................... 199 The non-aligned movement ....................................................................................... 202 The geopolitics of development: a second moment of refusal ...................................... 203 A reminder of your learning outcomes........................................................................ 207 Sample examination questions ................................................................................... 207 Chapter 12: The cultural geography of consumption ......................................... 209 Essential reading ....................................................................................................... 209 Further reading.......................................................................................................... 209 Aims of the chapter ................................................................................................... 210 Learning outcomes ................................................................................................... 210 Cultural imperialism and global commodity chains ..................................................... 210 The political economy of global cultural change.......................................................... 215 The tourist map ........................................................................................................ 217 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 223 A reminder of your learning outcomes ....................................................................... 223 Sample examination questions ................................................................................... 223 Appendix 1: Sample examination paper ............................................................ 225 Appendix 2: Full list of Further reading ............................................................. 227 Books........................................................................................................................ 227 Journals .................................................................................................................... 232

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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 coordinated 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
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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
The subject guide assists with the delivery of three key aims in 09 Human geography. 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 course, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: outline 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 describe and discuss 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.
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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 thoughtprovoking. 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 course. However, in putting together the subject guide, I have found the following book extremely useful and I recommend it for purchase:
Cloke, P ., P . Crang and M. Goodwin (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005) second edition [ISBN 9780340882764].

The following two textbooks are also very useful and it is recommended you buy either one or both:
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)]. Johnston, R.J., P .J. Taylor and M.J. Watts Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) second edition [ISBN 9780631222866].

Detailed reading references in this subject guide refer to the editions of the set textbooks listed above. New editions of one or more of these textbooks may have been published by the time you study this course. You can use a more recent edition of any of the books; use the detailed chapter and section headings and the index to identify relevant readings. Also check the virtual learning environment (VLE) regularly for updated guidance on readings.

Further reading
Please note that as long as you read the Essential reading you are then free to read around the subject area in any text, paper or online resource. You will need to support your learning by reading as widely as possible and by thinking about how these principles apply in the real world. To help you read extensively, you have free access to the VLE and University of London Online Library (see below). Each chapter lists Further reading which is not essential to pass the course 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 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 4

Introduction Third World Quarterly 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.

Online study resources

In addition to the subject guide and the Essential reading, it is crucial that you take advantage of the study resources that are available online for this course, including the VLE and the Online Library. You can access the VLE, the Online Library and your University of London email account via the Student Portal at: http://my.londoninternational.ac.uk You should have received your login details for the Student Portal with your official offer, which was emailed to the address that you gave on your application form. You have probably already logged in to the Student Portal in order to register! As soon as you registered, you will automatically have been granted access to the VLE, Online Library and your fully functional University of London email account. If you forget your login details at any point, please email uolia.support@ london.ac.uk quoting your student number.

The VLE
The VLE, which complements this subject guide, has been designed to enhance your learning experience, providing additional support and a sense of community. It forms an important part of your study experience with the University of London and you should access it regularly. The VLE provides a range of resources for EMFSS courses: Self-testing activities: Doing these allows you to test your own understanding of subject material. Electronic study materials: The printed materials that you receive from the University of London are available to download, including updated reading lists and references. Past examination papers and Examiners commentaries: These provide advice on how each examination question might best be answered. A student discussion forum: This is an open space for you to discuss interests and experiences, seek support from your peers, work collaboratively to solve problems and discuss subject material. Videos: There are recorded academic introductions to the subject, interviews and debates and, for some courses, audio-visual tutorials and conclusions. Recorded lectures: For some courses, where appropriate, the sessions from previous years Study Weekends have been recorded and made available. Study skills: Expert advice on preparing for examinations and developing your digital literacy skills. Feedback forms.
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Some of these resources are available for certain courses only, but we are expanding our provision all the time and you should check the VLE regularly for updates.

Making use of the Online Library

The Online Library contains a huge array of journal articles and other resources to help you read widely and extensively. To access the majority of resources via the Online Library you will either need to use your University of London Student Portal login details, or you will be required to register and use an Athens login: http://tinyurl.com/ollathens The easiest way to locate relevant content and journal articles in the Online Library is to use the Summon search engine. If you are having trouble finding an article listed in a reading list, try removing any punctuation from the title, such as single quotation marks, question marks and colons. For further advice, please see the online help pages: www.external.shl.lon.ac.uk/summon/about.php

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 Cooperation 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 Development Programme website of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees

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.undp.org www.unhcr.org

Introduction www.unicef.org www.unrisd.org www.worldbank.org www.wri.org 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

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.aag.org www.amergeog.org www.geography.org.uk www.rgs.org The Association of American Geographers The American Geographical Society The Geographical Association The Royal Geographical Society.

Unless otherwise stated, all websites in this subject guide were accessed in 2009. We cannot guarantee, however, that they will stay current and you may need to perform an internet search to find the relevant pages.

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.

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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.

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 here 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 VLE 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 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
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Introduction

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. 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. Remember, it is important to check the VLE for: up-to-date information on examination and assessment arrangements for this course where available, past examination papers and Examiners commentaries for the course which give advice on how each question might best be answered.

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 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
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ISI IT M&A MDG MNC NAFTA NAM NASA NATO NEPAD NGO NID NIDL NIEO ODA OECD OPEC OSS PQLI RTA SAP TNC UN UNCHS UNCTAD UNDP UNHCR UNICEF WHO WTO

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 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 Cooperation 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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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 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; 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 .S. Images in Geography Great Expectations, Geography, 90(1) 2005, 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 having completed the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: critically discuss the role of maps/images in the formation of geography as a discipline describe 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

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 present the relations between home or consumer and destination
14

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. (University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p.12.

Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

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 for churches

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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Figure 1.1 The topographic cow (Source: Vaca Topogrca 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. 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
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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 coordinates 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 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

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 Humboldts ve volume Kosmos (184562), a key text in the evolution of the discipline, included a volume on the earth as celestial space. Columbus thought the earth was pear-shaped and that one had to climb toward the equator: not an illogical observation as Newton also argued that the earth was not a pure sphere but had atter poles, and satellites would later show a squashed earth with a bulge beneath the equator. Ptolemy presented an image of the world from the standpoint of an observer beyond the globe, a gure often depicted as Apollo as in the 1570 Teatrum Orbis Terrarum designed by Abraham Ortelius; or an eye as suggested by Albert Durers illustration that also marked lines of sight to the earths axis.

Not until the 1950s was Greenwich adopted by all principal countries: Germany in the 1930s used Berlin as the meridian.

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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! www.math.ubc.ca/~israel/m103/mercator/mercator.html 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 practice in ways that could be used by sailors. This only took until 1630!9 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. 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
18

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 15N (following Ptolemy) when it is actually 38 42N. The principal culprit is Cardinal Pierre dAillys Imago Mundi, itself based on the maps presented by Ptolemy.

Scientic 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.

Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

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 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). Figure 1.2: AS17-148-22727 Apollo 17 view of the earth

(Source: www.nasa.gov reproduced with permission)

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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 (1903 1908). 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. 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?
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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.

Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

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)

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 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.

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Activity 1.2 Using the Online Library, 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 Trans-Siberian 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 Japan China 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 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
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Figure 1.3: Map of the London Underground (Source: Transport for London) 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.24647). 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
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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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Figure 1.4: Bombing points, MayAugust 1972 (Source: Lacoste, 1977, p.253) 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 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 time-delay 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.

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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 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.

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Chapter 1: The production and presentation of geographical knowledge

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 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

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: critically discuss the role of maps/images in the formation of geography as a discipline describe 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, 1840 1950, 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 1820 1940. (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.

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09 Human geography Gold, J.R. Image and environment: the decline of cognitive-behaviourialism in geography and reasons for its regeneration, Geoforum, (23) 1992, pp.23947. Golledge, R.G. Misconceptions, misrepresentations and misunderstandings in behavioural geography, Environment and Planning A, (13) 1981, pp.132544. 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.50433. Kirby, A. What did you do in the War, Daddy? in Godlewska, A. and N. Smith (eds) Geography and Empire. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) pp.30015. Kropotkin, P . What geography ought to be, Nineteenth Century, (18) 1885, pp.94056. 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.K. Exceptionalism in Geography: a methodological examination, 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. 30

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 this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: discuss the broad historical development of geography as a discipline describe how geography has emerged within the human and social sciences outline 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) 31

09 Human geography

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
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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 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 LHomme 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

Excellent discussions of geographys association with Empire are found in Bell et al. (1995), Driver (2001), Heffernan (1996) and Livingstone (1992).

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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.

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

Figure 2.1: Sir William Hodges (17441797) Vaitepiha Bay (Tahiti) (Reproduced with the permission of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London) 34

Chapter 2: The history of geographical ideas

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 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.

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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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)

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
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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 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
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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 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
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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.

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 decisionmaking 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 decisionmaking, 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, 39

09 Human geography 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)

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.

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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 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
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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 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 poststructuralism

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 post-structuralist 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
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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 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, postmodernism was a particular response to the capitalist crisis, mediated by technological change that demanded the reuse of urban space. The consumption aesthetic of post-modernism 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
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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, 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
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chapters, especially those on economic, political and developmental geography. 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.

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: discuss the broad historical development of geography as a discipline describe how geography has emerged within the human and social sciences outline 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. Kelly, P . The Political Economy of Local Labor Control in the Philippines, Economic Geography, 77(1) 2001. 47

09 Human geography 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 .H. Quantitative Methods: not positively positivist, Progress in Human 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 course as part of a BSc Geography and Environment will come across these in detail in course 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 this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: distinguish between the characteristics of quantitative and qualitative approaches to geographical enquiry identify and evaluate how each set of techniques is best suited to addressing particular kinds 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 gerrymandering1 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 possibilities for prediction. Quantitative approaches
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Gerrymandering is the deliberate division of electoral areas in order to give special advantages to one group and bias against another.

Chapter 3: Geographical methods

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, 1992 94 and 19992001 as well as the census. The good demographic coverage of these datasets and their geographical coordination 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 for whites. Moreover, infant mortality is positively related
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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 far-right 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
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appeared to 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? Problems of data availability and applicability can be resolved by the joining of sources. We can appreciate the simplicity of joining forms of
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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 example, it is common to use averages (usually the mean). But
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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 61. 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 frequently-used 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 L Enfant 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 L Enfant intended Washington DC to be read as a Declaration of Independence then we can also note how both the White House and the 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
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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 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 CentreLeft (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
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sparked deliberative 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
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statues as shorthand for 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-a-city 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 62

Chapter 3: Geographical methods 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)

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 cooperation of men, and through this cooperation 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 peace beyond 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 cooperation of men, and through cooperation, 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 gridiron 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
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will shine a spotlight on places that lack basic human freedoms. In the Liebeskind submission Liberty plays a number of important roles. 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 androgynousmale. 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 64

Chapter 3: Geographical methods command the air-bridged harbour that twin cities frame. Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp! 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 cooperate/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
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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 men self-defined as gay and there were numerous members of non-conformist 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 sevenhour 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.

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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 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 multi-culturalism; 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

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: distinguish between the characteristics of quantitative and qualitative approaches to geographical enquiry identify and evaluate how each set of techniques is best suited to addressing particular kinds 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. 71

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.30620. 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 this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: describe the intellectual development of economic geography outline 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,
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transport costs increase or other crops have higher yields or lower costs. 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
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Lancashire cotton industry, Marshalls belief in an evolutionary or organic 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 cooperation 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 neoclassical 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. Large-scale 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 postwar 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
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severe decline, a trend that continued through the 1980s. In the United 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 coordinate 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 ,
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while foreign trade generally increased from 13 per cent to just under 60 per cent of GDP between 1980 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.)

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

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 certain geographical areas more attractive (Massey,
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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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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.
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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 neoliberal 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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Chapter 4: Geographical views of the economy 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 Cooperation, 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. Agglomeration creates or reinforces an atmosphere that nurtures the
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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 cooperative 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, Markusen shows that structures and
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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

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: describe the intellectual development of economic geography outline 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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Chapter 5: Different structures of world polity

Essential reading
Agnew, J. Democracy and Human Rights after the Cold War, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Gruffudd, P . Nationalism, in Cloke, P . et al. Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Johnson, N.C. The Renaissance of Nationalism, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). OTuathail, G. Post-Cold War Geopolitics: Contrasting Superpowers in a World of Global Dangers, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Sharp, J. Critical Geopolitics, in Cloke, P . et al. Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Sidaway, J. Geopolitical Traditions, in Daniels, P . et al. (eds) Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008). Sidaway, J. The place of the nation-state, in Daniels, P . et al. (eds) Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008).

Further reading
Agnew, J. Geopolitics: Re-Visioning World Politics. (London: Routledge, 2003). Burton, J. Don (Juanito) Duck and the ImperialPatriarchal Unconscious: Disney Studios, the Good Neighbour Policy and the Packaging of Latin America, in Parker, A. et al. (eds) Nationalisms and Sexualities. (London: Routledge, 1992) pp.2141. Dalby, S. American security discourse: the persistence of geopolitics, Political Geography Quarterly, 9(2) 1990 pp.17188. Dalby, S. The Environment as Geopolitical Threat: Reading Robert Kaplans Coming Anarchy, Ecumene, 3(4) 1996, pp.47296. Dalby, S. Geopolitics and Global Security: Culture, identity and the pogo syndrome, in OTuathail, G. and S. Dalby (eds) Rethinking Geopolitics. (New York: Routledge, 1998). Dalby, S. Critical geopolitics: discourse, difference and dissent, Environment and Planning D, (9) 1999, pp.26183. Fawole, W.A. A continent in crisis: internal conflicts and external interventions in Africa, African Affairs, (103) 2004, pp.297303. Harvey, D. The New Imperialism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Heffernan, M. The Meaning of Europe: Geography and Geopolitics. (London: Edward Arnold, 1998) [ISBN 0340580186]. Huntington, S. The clash of civilisations, Foreign Affairs, (72) 1993, pp.2249. Huntington, S. The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order. (London: Simon & Schuster, 1997). Kaplan, R. The Coming Anarchy, The Atlantic Monthly, CCLXXIII (273) 1994, pp.4476. Kaplan, R. The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post-Cold War. (New York: Vintage, 2001). Kennan, G. (Mr X.) The sources of Soviet conduct, Foreign Affairs, (25) 1947, pp.56682. 85

09 Human geography Mermin, J. US intervention and the new world order: lessons from the Cold War and post-Cold War cases, Political Studies Quarterly, (15) 1997, pp.77102. OTuathail, G. Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space. (London: Routledge, 1996). OTuathail, G. An Anti-Geopolitical Eye: Maggie OKane in Bosnia, 199293, Gender, Place and Culture, 3(2) 1996, pp.17185. OTuathail, G., S. Dalby and P . Routledge The Geopolitics Reader. (London: Routledge, 1999). Parker, G. Not Glass but Diamond: An Evaluation of the Geopolitical World View of Saul B. Cohen, Geopolitics, 3(2) 1998, pp.11324. Political Geography, 21(5) 2002, Special Issue dedicated to Saul B. Cohen. Sharp, J. Condensing the Cold War: Readers Digest and American Identity. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). Smith, N. American Empire: Roosevelts Geographer and the Prelude to Globalisation. (Berkeley: California Press, 2003). Smith, N. The endgame of globalisation, Political Geography, 25(6) 2006, pp.114. Taylor, P . God invented war to teach Americans geography, Political Geography, 23, 2004, pp.48792 Taylor, P . and C. Flint Political Geography: World Economy, Nation-State and Locality. (Harlow: Pearson Prentice Hall, c.2007) (fourth edition).

Aims of the chapter

In this chapter I want to look at how states are organised territorially, what we mean by the idea of the nation-state and, how during the latter part of the twentieth century the idea of the nation-state has changed. Specifically, I want us to think about how the Cold War influenced the idea of the nation-state, making it both stronger through the idea of national security and conceptually more ambiguous as EastWest became a defining spatial metaphor. In the post-Cold War era new spatial organisations have become the focus of attention from a sense of new instability. Political geography has also adopted the cultural turn through critical geopolitics.

Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading, you should be able to: define the nation-state discuss the spatial organisation of the Cold War discuss the complexities of post-Cold War ideas of disorder describe critical geopolitics.

Geopolitics: definition, rise and decline

According to Geraid OTuathail geopolitics is a messy concept, even possibly a convenient fiction. The traditional definition would the the spatial study of the relationship among states and the implications of these relationships for the morphology of the political map as a whole (Parker, 1998). More mechanistically, geopolitics is the study of the influence of geography on political action. The term geopolitics (Geopolitik) is usually accredited to the Swedish academic-politician Rudolf Kjelln, who also originated the term autarchy meaning self-reliance, in the late nineteenth century. Kjelln was a follower of the German geographer Frederich Ratzel (18441904) who is credited with elevating political geography away from the minutiae of fact finding to an attempt to map the balance of political power over
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space according to scientific principle. Ratzel was especially concerned with providing a theory of the nationstate, which since the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) had been recognised as the principal container of government (in Europe anyway), removing competing power domains (such as the papacy and city-state) and leaving territorial extension through border dispute as the means of extension (Taylor and Flint, 2007). Ratzel viewed the state as a space organism. Influenced by social Darwinism and critical of Malthus, preferring instead to think of population growth as forcing adaptation to the environment, Ratzel deliberately used a biological metaphor to explain the interaction of states and space. His general proposition was that just as an organism needed space to survive (indeed space was an indicator of virility) so a state organism was in a perpetual struggle for life and space. As he put it: It [the state] is not like the case of the oak, which permits a good deal of weed and grass to grow under its crown. The state cannot tolerate a second or third [state] on its territory is it does not wish to weaken itself. Expansion was, therefore, a natural biological development from which he proposed the Seven Laws of State Growth (Box 5.1). From these ideas he developed the idea of Lebensraum (living space). Box 5.1 The seven laws of state growth 1. The space of states grows with the expansion of the population having the same culture. 2. Territorial growth follows other aspects of development. 3. A state grows by absorbing other smaller units. 4. The frontier is the peripheral organ of the state that reflects the strength and growth of the state, hence, it is not permanent. 5. States in the course of their growth seek to absorb politically valuable territory. 6. The impetus for growth comes to a primitive state from a more highly-developed civilisation. 7. The trend toward territorial growth is contagious and increases in the process of transmission. (Source: Ratzel, F. Political geography, 1896.) Ratzels influence can be seen throughout the refinement to geopolitics for the following century. He had a profound, if rather undeclared, influence on the British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder (see Chapter 1), notably in the closed system that is basis to the Pivot, the rather literal use of organic metaphor associated with decay of Britain and the growth, evolution and succession of aggressors. Ratzels influence on other geographers was also clear. His idea of Lebensraum (living space) was taken up enthusiastically by General Major Professor Dr Karl von Haushofer (18691946). Von Haushofer saw Lebensraum as a means to revolve the fragmentation of the ethnic German population across Middle Europe (Mitteleuropa). A former President League for the Preservation of Germandom Abroad, von Haushofer argued that Germany should support the unification of a pan-German space. Unlike Ratzel who had envisaged Germany acquiring Grossraum (large space) outside Europe, and not by war, through the organisation of sub-continental groups in the US, Australia and Russia, and through use of transport and commerce to build a continental group in Europe, the loss of German colonies in Africa at the 1919 Peace Treaty of Versailles convinced von Haushofer that Lebensraum should be a theory for acquiring space in Europe. To legitimate his idea
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von Haushofer took Mackinders Heartland notion literally as a contest for control of Central and Eastern Europe. In tune with German popular thought at the time he argued for a Drang Nacht Osten (March to the east) into what he called dead lands: like Ratzels oak tree Germany should spread east before the east had the chance to spread west (Heffernan, 1998). The distinction here with Ratzels more benign Lebensraum is clear. First, while Ratzel employed the term Volk (generically, people) von Haushofer meant an ethnic nationalist grouping, akin to the Nazi bodenpolitik (soil politics). Second, whereas Ratzel considered borders to be just where an organic state had got to at a moment in time, von Haushofer envisioned a borderless world where agreed limits (as per Versailles) could be traversed. In practice, von Haushofer proposed the annexation of Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary to form a Greater Germany and in 1924 for an alliance with Russia in Eurasian Pact. The influence in turn can be seen in the economic geography of the period, notably in Christallers schema of how the colonisation of a flat plain would result in the natural condition of cell-like organisation (a copy of Ratzels metaphoric use of bee hives).1 The legacy of Ratzel is diminished with Second World War in which an aggressive geopolitics is discredited in favour of the (metaphorically) more defensive version of Mackinder. His imperial vision of the world, however, was challenged from the US. In practical terms, an invitation from the pre-eminent US geographer of his age, Isaiah Bowman, in 1943 to modify the PivotHeartland thesis in the light of world events, provoked Mackinder to assert that the Heartland would move East to Yenesi River (called Lenaland), a proposition that JapanChina might ally with Russia and suggestion that a Midland Ocean alliance would be needed to counter a land power with naval power. While the latter is speculative of the post-War North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the flexibility of Mackinders reinterpretation of the Pivot revealed its reactionary nature. The discursive legacy too was usurped by the US, with Nicholas Spykman suggesting that the key geopolitical space was the Rimland around Heartland which was vulnerable to both sea and land (Agnew, 2003). Nevertheless, Mackinderan reference to centres, peripheries, flashpoints, pivots could be grafted onto Cold War rhetoric. OTuathail cites Ronald Reagan National Security Strategy States (1988):
The first historical dimension of our strategy is relatively simple, clear-cut, and immensely sensible. It is the conviction that the United States most basic national security interests would be endangered if a hostile state or group of states were to dominate the Eurasian land mass that area of the globe often referred to as the worlds heartland. We fought two world wars to prevent this from occurring. And, since 1945, we have sought to prevent the Soviet Union from capitalising on its geostrategic advantage to dominate its neighbors in Western Europe, Asia and the Middle east, and thereby fundamentally alter the global balance of power to our disadvantage. (1992, p.101)

While von Haushofer claimed inuence over Hitler, through his acquaintance with Rudolf Hess whom he met in 1919, a link that British and American geographers were keen not to dispel, describing von Haushofer as the advertising executive of the Third Reich in recognition of his frequent radio broadcasts and journal articles in praise of National Socialism, he merits only two mentions in Mein Kampf. At the end of the war von Haushofer was interned in Dachau for a month followed by three years house arrest (OTuathail, 1996).

We can see from this quote how the landsea, EastWest, heartlandrim, and villainvictim binaries established by Mackinder play on into the Cold War. During the Cold War, the USSR (communism) was depicted as threatening in all directions, requiring the West to defend many Rimlands. Surrounding the USSR is therefore a benign act while any move by USSR to move out of such a geographically powerful position must be a malign act.
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After the Second World War then we can see a shift in territoriality as the US and UK geographers came to define the world view. From 1944, the geopolitical discourse appeared to reveal much less obvious self-interest, to be even more abstract with neutral and moral assertions about how the world map was organised or should be. There was also much less direct concern with Europe, which was no longer so obviously the centre of the map, as attention shifted to the developing world. In particular, by comparison to the positions held by European governments, the US was a relatively consistent advocate of decolonisation during the 1940s. In a second Westphalian moment the Roosevelt and Truman administrations argued that the fundamental component of modernity was the nationstate. Nevertheless, the US at this time was a strong supporter of the need to organise nation-states into crude homogenous groupings based on economy, polity and cultural designations. One manifestation was the idea of the Third World, organised around the Bretton Woods Institutions (see Chapter 11), the other linked order was dictated by the Cold War.

The Cold War: realist geopolitics

The Cold War reoriented how we thought of spatial organisation, away from the concerns of one nation towards a more fuzzy ideological construct. Strategic concerns were expressed less in terms of the physical domination of space and became a matter of political and cultural influence. To use one of the phrases of the time, it was a matter of winning hearts and minds just as much as occupying foreign soil. Let us consider how the strategic concerns of the Cold War were spatialised. In so doing we will adopt a Western orientation, essentially the spatial organisation promoted by US foreign policy, although we might imagine that the then USSR and China had different ways of representing spatial organisation. Perhaps the overriding idea of the Cold War was the Containment Thesis proposed by US diplomat and academic George Kennan, writing under the pseudonym Mr X. Kennan argued that the West needed to adopt a defensive attitude to communist expansionism. The Cold War would be fought not by building space for the nation (see Ratzel, Mackinder and others) but through spatial exclusion, denying space to aggressors, creating barriers between West and East. As observed by Dalby space and power came to be understood in terms of distance providing security (Dalby, 1990, p.177). The Kennan idea of Containment meant that the West would have to fight communism not on a small number of fronts, as Nazism had been fought, but everywhere. Although he was not specific about where the threat of communism would be strongest, in reality the front-line against the export of Communism was soon understood to be the Third World. Indeed, in most conceptualisations the Third World, with its formative governments and nation status was regarded as especially vulnerable, almost passive, to the outside influence. Consider, for example, the following National Security Council (NSC) memorandum about Africa:
The African is still immature and unsophisticated with respect to his attitudes towards issues that divide the world today. The Africans mind is not made up and he is being subjected to a number of contradictory forces. This pressure will increase in the future. The African is a target for the advocation of Communism, old-fashioned colonialism, xenophobic nationalism, and Egyptian Islamic propaganda, as well as for the proponents of an orderly 89

09 Human geography development of the various political entities in the area in question, closely tied to the WestOur policies must be designed therefore to convince the African that by association with the West he can best achieve his goals in a manner which in the long run will be most to his advantage. (NSC, 1957)

If the Cold War was to be fought between ideologies rather than nation-states expansion would be more subtle than physical occupation of space. How then could the threat, and hence the need for containment, be represented in spatial terms? One of the key signifiers of communist influence was the perception that governments were following an unnatural path to development. As outlined in President Trumans Four Point Plan (see Chapter 11) development was synonymous with an anti-ideological American Way of Life (liberty, individualism, trade, production and knowledge). Anything that seemed not to match these values was thereby anti-American and therefore Communist. Countries that adopted a heavy hand of the state, in for example industrialisation programmes or land reform, were therefore to be treated with suspicion. It was not, of course, the fault of these countries that they had veered from the right path. Developing countries were mostly newly formed and poor, hence the rejection of values had to be motivated by outside forces. Considerable effort went in to analysing the wrong kind of development. Social reforms, for example, were a sign of pending communism. As expressed by NSC 144/1 (1953):
There is a trend in Latin America toward nationalist regimes maintained in large part by appeals to the masses of the population. Concurrently, there is an increasing popular demand for immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses, with the result that most Latin American governments are under intense domestic political pressures to increase production and to diversify their economiesA realistic and constructive approach to this need which recognises the importance of bettering conditions for the general population is essential to arrest the drift in the area toward radical and nationalistic regimes. The growth of nationalism is facilitated by historic anti-US prejudices and exploited by Communists.

The memo is making oblique reference to Guatemala where the Arbenz government acquired lands belonging to the US United Fruit Company for distribution to peasant households. Although the government adopted a blueprint based on Roosevelt 1930s New Deal and paid compensation at the taxable rates declared by United Fruit, the move was regarded as virtual communism. At the 1954 Inter-American conference a resolution was tabled that communism was incompatible with the concept of American freedom and as argued by Secretary of State Robert Dulles foreign ideologies should be outlawed in the American Republics. All countries except Guatemala voted for the resolution, forcing John Peurifoy, US Ambassador to Guatemala, to observe that I came away definitely convinced that if [Arbenz] is not a communist he will certainly do until one comes along. In 1954 the CIA supported the coup of Castillo Armas. Taken to its logical extension the idea that certain countries were not adopting appropriate development policies, and were therefore under the influence of communism, meant that the reach of communism could be measured against an index of development characteristics. In 1950 the US National Security Council Memorandum 68 categorised nations
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according to whether pro- or anti- the US according to the adoption of economic and social development policies. The simplification of the world into an EastWest ideological map meant that NSC-68 was able to put Marxism, Socialism, nationalism as well as Third World solidarity and Black consciousness into the same bracket. As political scientist Martha Cottom commented, the US perception of the world at the time ranged from simplified to extremely simplified. A second means to depict the need to contain communism was through metaphorical representation. President Truman in his Doctrine had already set up the notion of fall-spread at this time free countries always fell and communism always spread, rarely was the metaphor used the other way around. Subsequently, other metaphors came forth. President Eisenhower provided the domino, refined by Secretary of State Alexander Haig as drawing the line to indicate that alleged communist influence in Nicaragua would not be permitted to get as far as El Salvador. Communist spread was referred to as a disease, a contagion, or as a virus, in the words of Secretary of State George Shultz We have to safeguard Central American countries against the Nicaraguan virus. The medical metaphors feed the idea of containment as a defence, necessitating action to cut lifelines or support buffer states as cordon sanitaire. Drawing on an unusual geographical knowledge President Reagan noted in 1984:
if we do nothing, if we continue to provide too little help, our choice will be a Communist Central America with additional Communist military bases on the mainland of this hemisphere and Communist subversion spreading southward and northward.

We can witness within this quote the sense that national security was a matter of regional control. Regions to some extent became extensions of the nation-state, in the US the region extended to Central America and the Caribbean, to Western Europe the region meant a watchful eye on the North Atlantic, Turkey and North Africa. Perhaps the most famous depiction of the nationregion association is the geographical descriptor of the Backyard. As noted by George Black, the Backyard is far from being an empty metaphor but one that resonated strongly with Western citizens, as a place that is crucial to the familys security; if it is not safe, then nothing is safe[It] is an area where one can act without inhibitions sunbathe nude, relax with a barbecue, let the pets run wildIt is also where the garbage is dumped, and in the old days its doubled as an outhouse. It is an area for play, experimentation, and control, a place where the owner makes his own laws, a laboratory for ideas that will be tried later on the broader world beyond its walls (1988, p.15). Inevitably as the Cold War dragged on the Backyard appeared to grow larger in 1981 the Regional Security System (OECS) defined Venezuela as part of the Caribbean and in 1982 US Caribbean Command became one of three NATO Atlantic command centres. Again, President Reagan pushed the metaphorical boundary, almost suggesting that as the weak resolve of the West meant losing the Cold War so it became a matter not only of watching the Backyard but:
the situation here is, you might say, in our own front yard; it isnt just El Salvador. What were doing, in coming to the aid of a friendly country in our hemisphere is trying to halt the infiltration into the Americas by terrorists, by outside interference and those forces who arent just aiming at El Salvador but I think are aiming at the whole of Central America and possibly later South America and Im sure eventually North America. But this is what were doing, is trying to stop 91

09 Human geography this destabilising force of terrorism and guerrilla warfare and revolution from being exported in here, backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba. (Emphasis added.) Central America is a region of great importance to the United States. And it is so close: San Salvador is closer to Houston, Texas, than Houston is to Washington. Central America is America. It is on our doorstep and it has become the stage for a bold attempt by the Soviet Union, Cuba and Nicaragua to install communism by force throughout the hemisphere. (Emphasis added.)

It could even be too late. As popularised during the McCarthyist purges of the 1950s there was the possibility of Reds under the beds. Communist influence in the extended Backyard and a possible Frontyard plays to an idea of spatial closure, the reduction of distance between US (West) and threat. Quotes from the time underscore this idea. Nestor Sanchez, Assistant Defence Secretary to Reagan noted that San Salvador is closer to Washington DC than is San Francisco and Reagan noted that Managua is only two days from Harlington, Texas. As if to bring spatial closure even closer to home, the US governments declared conditions of National Emergency for the oddest of reasons. In 1985 it was announced that the US was on alert due to an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. The event was elections in Nicaragua. Across the US and Western Europe, of course, people but especially children would frequently be drilled in civic defence, meaning a rush to crouch under desks at school or reminders to keep a supply of dry foods available in case of nuclear attack. Finally the Cold War produced some unusual manipulation of maps both physically and cognitively. At one scale, countries would appear small to denote their status as puppets of an outside (larger) aggressor. Some countries became so small they were removed from maps altogether: Cuba was often excluded from maps of the Caribbean lest US tourists were worried about taking holidays in the region. More seriously, smallness was a test of US ideological and military credibility: if the US was incapable of controlling small republics and islands, how would it hold influence in the Middle-East or Asia? At a different scale some countries increased in size to stress their importance to global events. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, for example, made the clearly exaggerated claim that Central America is the most important place on earth right now. As if to indicate that small places, made smaller by their vulnerability, were large due to their strategic significance military responses to communist influence was, literally, a question of overkill. A useful example is the 1983 US invasion of Grenada, a country of 109,000 people, with a GDP of $97 million (less than the cost of invasion), and where the socialist Black consciousness government of Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard known as JEWEL (Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education and Liberation) had conducted a social programme that achieved the highest rate of literacy in the Anglo-Caribbean, improved health with primary health care, reduced the patientdoctor ratio to 1:2,500, and encouraged a mixed economy with 65 per cent GDP from private sector and approval from the World Bank. Nevertheless, Ronald Reagan denied Grenada access to the Caribbean Basin Initiative, a fund for regional development, as it had turned away from their American heritage and their neighbours and become a Soviet-Cuban colony being readied as a major military bastion to export terror and undermine democracy. Evidence appeared in the claimed 1,100 Cuban troops on the island, the burning down of
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the Holiday Inn (subsequently claimed to be the work of the CIA) and the threat of a long-range airport under construction (part funded by USAID). Prior to invasion a 1981 US and NATO exercise off the Virgin Islands involving 250 ships, 1,000 aircraft and 120,000 troops had a mission to fight a fictitious country named Amber (the Amberines a barely-veiled reference to Grenada and Grenadines) and install a pro-US government until elections could be held. The real invasion termed Operation Urgent Fury involved 7,000 US troops in a beach landing, supported by 300 coalition troops from Jamaica and Barbados who encountered 43 Cubans. After invasion, Grenada was obliged to cancel social programmes to fall in line with neo-liberal austerity, which after 5.5 per cent economic growth under JEWEL now meant 40 per cent unemployment and 50 per cent GDP in the form of aid.

Cold War geographer: Saul Cohen

The Cold War produced a series of intellectuals who sought to interpret the new geopolitical order: we have already noted George Kennan (Mr X) and might also think of Henry Kissenger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Geography as a discipline seemed to lack a Mackinder or Bowman, and International Relations rather than Political Geography took the limelight. The principal exception was Saul Cohen who sought to identify the contribution of geography to the balance of power. Cohen, again, uses an organism metaphor, taking the idea of entropy (the feature for energy to dissipate over time) within a developmental world system to argue that energy needs to be transferred for the system to survive. Cohen traces the development of a world system of political organisation to arrive at the 1960s where he sees a shift to a system based on levels and regions, away from a USUSSR binary to a multi-polar world in which the European Union, Japan and China, possess global reach. The two main regions are a Trade-Dependent Maritime and Eurasian Continental defined according to use of trade and technology, and a maritime culture. He notes that 60 per cent of the US population is located on the coast, conveniently ignoring that a similar statistic applies to most African countries and dismissing China as possessing a culture that reveres mountains. Maritime regions possess lower entropy as an outward-looking stance provides dynamism (Cohen, 1991). By contrast to the Rimland view that understood geopolitics to be a matter of confrontation, perhaps through proxy states, in the edges around the superpower blocs, Cohen identified what he called Shatterbelts:
It is true that wars, revolts and coups are chronic in the Caribbean, South America and South Asia. The distinguishing feature of the Shatterbelt, however, is that it presents an equal playing field to two or more competing powers operating from different geostrategic realms. (Cohen, 1991, p.567)

Cohen suggests, however, that in the Shatterbelts the major powers were in retreat. Into these spaces came new powerholders, taking up the transfer of energy. These regional powers, either as surrogates of major powers (Cuba, Egypt) or on their own account (Nigeria), are presented as the new pivots to history. In later versions of his ideas he argued that there were other regional levels and in 1991 he introduces what he calls Gateway States such as Estonia, Latvia, Gaza and Northern Ireland as transitional to regional status. Cohen can be credited with putting political geography back on to the big stage of geostrategic thinking. However, his ideas are also problematic, not least in an echo of Mackinder in that his desire to proclaim mastery
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of the wider picture omits awkward factual detail and counter argument. In later phases of the world system, for example, it is clear that Cohen holds the US as top nation but does not seek to explain, using entropy or any concept applied to others how that hegemony came about. Cohens model is also predicated on a predetermined selection of key regions within a global hierarchy according to which nations are discussed if they fit those categorisations. Nations, however, operate on a number of different levels, from self-interest to international cooperation beyond the region (there is no mention of OPEC or NAM). Indeed, Cohens outline of the characteristics that differentiate nations by level from economic and nuclear, to sense of history and self-image suggests as much but is then ignored (Cohen 1982, p.230). Curious too that the third-order countries are identified according to their poverty, internal religious, racial or ethnic divisiveness, resources, size, isolation or neighbouring major power but Nigeria, which would qualify on these grounds, is ranked as a secondorder regional power presumably on strategic grounds. Similarly, conflicts that appear not to affect the geopolitical order, or position of US as top nation, are of little concern to Cohen: so no mention of South Africa in Namibia, civil conflicts in Peru or ethno-national insurgence in Kashmir. Nevertheless, we might think of the Shatterbelt ideas as a tautology. Shatterbelts are characterised by political turmoil and ethnic violence that is a sign of geopolitical instability that is defined by the appearance of violence. Moreover, interpretation of causation as so often in geopolitics is in the eye of the beholder. Shatterbelts it seems are created by others and not the US that according to Mackinder is defensive, and according to Bowman is following a natural and amoral path. So, US support for Israel is a response to USSR support for Syria/Egypt, US control of the Panama Canal is because of maritime coastal dominance but the 1956 Suez crisis was geopolitical. Indeed, Cohen is willing to make special dispensations for some countries, for example Israel and South Africa which he categorises as second-order regional powers without hinterlands, ignoring the military dominance of both beyond immediate borders. In a 1982 paper he argues that second-order status is conditioned by genuine economic complementarity and political equality and democracy, hardly qualities to which South Africa, Nigeria or Israel would meet at the time. If the test of geopolitics is the ability to make accurate predictions then Cohens work is a mixed package. With the benefit of hindsight Cohen makes some off claims for Iraq and East Germany in his 1982 paper and for Yugoslavia in 1991, while noting but not explaining the demise of Cuba, Indonesia, Pakistan and Poland (1982). His call for the US to withdraw military bases to prevent aggravation shatterbelts and to strengthen regional powers instead sits oddly with his opposition to US support for Pakistan. Throughout his work Cohen exhibits a pessimism optimism. He suggests that the US should concede that the USSR is a world power, in an echo of Mackinder pivot, but suggests the US should not worry about the possible USSRChinaVietnam pact that seemed possible at the time, a view that was correct in hindsight. The argument that the US should be less interventionist in trying to create peace in the Middle East but rather allow countries to join Maritime Europe through trade has merit. However, the logic that if peaceful the Middle East would receive entropy transfer would seem unconvincing to the State Department or foreign ministries. For reviews see Parker (1998) and Political Geography (2002).

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Post-Cold War: a new geopolitical disorder

As Cohen was putting the finishing touches to the construction of geopolitical orders across the globe, reality appeared to be taking a different course. The division of the world into East (communist) and West (capitalist), and between North (developed) and South (developing), with some variants in between was collapsing. As Agnew (2003) reported, by 1989 it was clear to most people that established political orders, and the threats they implied, had become deterritorialised or unbundled. We can appreciate this observation in a number of different ways. First, certain nation-states seemed difficult to place within the standard Ideological Grid. North Korea, Libya, Cuba and Iraq appeared, according to National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, to exhibit a chronic inability to engage constructively with the outside world. These rogue states were deaf to Washington, as well as to Moscow and Brussels. The US suggested Lake (1994) must neutralise or contain this band of outlaw states. Second, there were nation-states without states; examples included Afghanistan and Rwanda, or were failed states such as Russia under mafia rule, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Somalia where warlords were in charge, Colombia under guerrilla or paramilitary groups with drug connections, a dynastic autocracy running Syria and Islamic clerics in Iran and Algeria. Third, there were states without nations, in the case of Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, where international mandate ceded government to the UN and delivery to NGOs. Fourth, there was witness to a growing number of de-territorialised dangers: among other things loose nukes and weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, computer hackers, anti-globalisation and eco-warriors, diseases (HIV , TB) that had no affinity to place. Indeed, these threats seemed to thrive with economic and technological globalisation. In a 1997 speech to the UN, then President Bill Clinton returned to a theme that he had first aired at his 1993 inauguration, the promise and the peril brought by a blurring between foreign and domestic:
Bit by bit the information age is chipping away at the barriers economic, political and social that once kept people locked in and ideas locked outWe are all vulnerable to the reckless acts of rogue states and to an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and international criminals. The twenty-first century predators feed on the very free flow of information and people we cherish. (Clinton 1997 to UN)

It seemed that if threats could no longer be restricted to predictable spaces such as the nation-state then containment would be infeasible. Consequently, national security was no longer the apt frame to understand global threats. No sooner then had President George Bush (Snr) declared a New World Order and Francis Fukyama the End of History with the victory of capitalism, than the geopolitical vocabulary was trying to come to terms with disorder, chaos and risk. New geopolitical orders were quickly offered. The best known, courtesy of the events of 11 September 2001 and since, is The Clash of Civilisations proposed by Samuel Huntington (1997), an academic and former member of the National Security Council. According to Huntington, The fault lines between civilisations will be the battle lines of the future:
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. (1997, p.22) 95

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He defines cultures according to their highest common grouping or identity, how they form a civilisation. Here, while civilisation is recognised as a broad category, Huntington argues that they are meaningful entities, dynamic, capable of rise/fall, division and merger. He identifies eight major civilisations: Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, SlavicOrthodox, Latin American and possibly African. However, while each civilisation has a different history, language, culture, the most important characteristic is religion. The revival of religion then mirrors the weakening nation-state:
A person can be half-French and half-Arab and simultaneously a citizen of many countries. It is more difficult to be half-Catholic and half-Muslim. (1997, p.27)

To support this case, Huntington observes that while the US and Europe share many of the economic conflicts as Japan, the cultural gap between the US and Japan results in the latter conflict being depicted with greater political and emotional intensity. The key cultural or civilisation divide, however, is between JudeoChristianity and Islam. Invoking a Cold War metaphor Huntington claims that there is an Iron Curtain of culture where Islam is concerned, a consequence of Islam having bloody borders (1997, p.35). The Clash of Civilisations has become a best-seller around the world and especially in the US. Huntington maps out a simple view of the world that once more has an order and after 9/11 seems to have a predictive quality. We must consider, however, the shortcomings to The Clash. First, and perhaps most obvious, is that Huntington holds to a simple view of civilisation. In his analysis there is no attempt to consider how civilisations are the result of complex historical and cultural influences, not least colonialism and development that result in what we term hybridity (see Chapter 12). Nor is Huntington concerned that culture and religion are not given but fiercely fought over (Dalby, 1998). While Huntington generalises across all his categorisations, he leaves one unanalysed, namely Western civilisation, noting only that Western civilisation is universal in that its fundamental aspects can be accepted by most people (i.e. freedom, democracy, human rights). Yet, the emergence of a European network state and a fully integrated European economy without a European identity (overlayed on national and regional identities) seems to be an unsustainable situation (Castells and AlSayyad, 2002, p.4). One response is for identities to be increasingly based on regions or nations, most obviously evidenced by the rise of Basque, Catalan, Welsh, Piedmontan identities, or at local scales with common interest communities forming through religion, ethnicity or residence (gated communities). Second, while the broad canvas of civilisation has caught the imagination, The Clash holds the nation-state as the principal space of politics. Nationstates do not disappear in the Huntington analysis (but see OTuathail, 1996, pp.24647). Rather, he is keen to identify what he terms the torn countries on borders of civilisations such as Turkey, Russia and Mexico that appear almost as new Pivots (Chase et al., 1996) and most civilisation blocs have a core power (US, Japan, China, Brazil). Third, if as OTuathail (1996, p.249) proposes, The Clash is about re-legitimating the West, and especially the US, to intervene in the name of something greater than self-interest (no longer the fight against communism, but the defence of civilisation or at least the Wests), then at least until the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, acceptance of this project was unclear. A West against the Rest, to use a subheading from Huntington, according to religious fault lines can only partly account for why the US withdrew
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from Somalia, ignored Rwanda, the Turkish Kurds and Bosnian Muslims, devoted only about $1.5bn per annum to the UN for humanitarian assistance, but then intervened on behalf of Kosovan Albanians against the Serbs, and it deflects attention from conflicts with Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and perhaps now Iran, that may have much more base motives (Harvey, 2003).2 As influential as The Clash for much of the 1990s is The Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan (1994, 2001). Kaplan captures the sense of instability through vivid metaphor. Describing a journey across West Africa he notes:
I saw similar young men everywhere hordes of them. They were like loose molecules in a very unstable social fluid, a fluid that was on the verge of igniting. (1994, p.46)

Kaplan builds an argument that West Africa is:

becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental, and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real strategic danger. Disease overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and international drug cartels are now most tellingly demonstrated through a West African prism. West Africa provides an appropriate introduction to the issues, often extremely unpleasant to discuss, that will soon confront our civilisation. (1994, p.46)

Huntington is often implicated in converting the threat of rogue states into refashioned realist geopolitics of military intervention. In fact by 1990 the US Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate of Joint Staff had devised a military strategy to counter a non-USSR threat.

The youth of West Africa, and elsewhere, Kaplan suggests, will find war and a barracks a step up rather than a step down (1994, p.72). Organisation will be mercenary, clan based, crime and war will be indistinguishable, and disputes will be local and thus impossible to defend against. This invokes Malthus to prophesise [A]nd West Africas future, eventually, will also be that of most of the rest of the world (p.48). Unlike Huntington, however, Kaplan describes how the map of West Africa was set out by colonialism, Cold War and modernisation. Today, countries hold little meaning to transnational illegal trade, migration, sponsored armies, to people surviving in the slums with routine violence, disease and as a consequence of environmental destruction. The threats will be the environment (the national security issue of the early twentieth century, 1994, p.58) through impact on migration and overcrowding, conditions that will see groups forming around religion and ethnicity in the absence of national government. Compared to Huntington, however, Kaplan is notably more ambivalent about Islam. Although he notes that Islam is the one religion that is prepared to fight (p.66), his concern is a weaker Islam that loses moral control (over crime, family) as it spreads. Unlike Huntington, Kaplan stresses that this more fluid world will be more unpredictable; the Saddam Husseins of the future will have more, not fewer, opportunities (p.59). The implicit confrontation of Huntingtons work (note his title) is also more muted in Kaplan. He depicts a future of the West de-linking from Africa, and poor in general. Using a metaphor borrowed from Thomas Homer-Dixon:
Outside the stretch limo would be a rundown, crowded planet of skinhead Cossacks and juju warriors, influenced by the worst refuse of Western pop culture and ancient tribal hatreds, and battling over scraps of overused earth in guerrilla conflicts that ripple across 97

09 Human geography continents and intersect in no discernible patter meaning theres no easy-to-define threat. Kennans world of one adversary seems as distant as the world of Herodotus. (1994, p.63)

Kaplan notes that the US is already withdrawing missions from West Africa. Indeed, the 1990s saw many countries draw as many contingency plans for getting nationals out of collapsing states than of getting troops in. Once out, Kaplan argues that a wall of disease will reduce motives to go back or for others to intervene in the first place. In a vivid metaphor Kaplan suggests that JF Kennedy airport will become the frontline to stall The Coming Anarchy. It is a view that has been widely repeated (Box 5.2). Box 5.2 The Hopeless Continent In May 2000 The Economists lead story was entitled The Hopeless Continent. The front cover showed a youth with a rocket launcher peering out through a cut-out of Africa. The youth appears to be half smiling and menacing at the same time. The article, entitled The Heart of the Matter a play on Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness, was motivated by the abduction of UN troops by forces loyal to Foday Sankoh in Sierra Leone. The article, however, contains a number of reference points similar to Kaplan. It compares Freetown at the start of the nineteenth century as remote and malarial, but also a place of hope and the twenty-first where it symbolises failure and despair. Sierra Leone too is clearly meant to symbolise just one of many failed states of the continent and another example of how the UN involvement has degenerated into a shambles. While The Economist notes that some of the attention to Africas problems has been positive support to fight AIDS and malaria has risen, trade restrictions have been removed, Highly Indebted Nations debt relief has met with increased social expenditure many difficulties remain. The article cites floods in Mozambique and Madagascar, famine in Ethiopia, thuggery in Zimbabwe, brutality, despotism, corruption that for reasons buried in their cultures, seem especially susceptible to [Africa]. Indeed, there are so many conflicts and such a poor record of resolution the article records the ambivalence to Rwanda, Congo, running from Somalia, and how the UNs recent history is littered with meaningless vows of protection in safe areas that the UN must fight the wars it can win and be more aggressive in doing so. Otherwise, The Economist warns we will return to a point not long past when it began to look as though the world might just give up on the entire continent. Given the provocative argument and influence of Kaplans work, he has not gone without critique. Perhaps the best is by Dalby (1996) for whom Kaplan presents a bifurcated world of insiders and outsiders (note the limousine metaphor), with those outside seemingly unable to master nature, only destroy it and only misuse technology. Such analysis lacks a political economy. Why is the environment destroyed in countries needing to export their way out of debt, conditioned by Structural Adjustment and prompted by insatiable demand for resources in trade deficit developed countries? The isolationist response to the anarchy also paints a simple picture of the motives for conflict in Africa (see Fawole, 2004), the origins of which have their roots in colonialism and post-colonial pacts, and a rose-tinted image of previous involvement in certain regions of the world. Were previous interventions to solve problems or secure raw materials? As a joke, Ronald Reagan stated in 1984 that the invasion of Grenada was to make secure the worlds largest producer of nutmeg as you cant make eggnog without it. How will isolation help the deprivation of the youth at centre of Kaplans threatening disorder?

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Critical geopolitics
While the geopolitics of Huntington and Kaplan attempts to deal with disorder at the end of the Cold War, both are drawn to the need for generalisation, of retaining the nation-state as an important spatial scale and using shock tactics to raise the profile of their arguments. Both texts create strong images that can be related to the media information of the past decade and which allow the specific to jump scale and be perceived as a global threat. Appreciating this device draws our work toward a more recent current of political geography called critical geopolitics. Critical geopolitics does not accept that geopolitics is a neutral survey of the globe, a geograph. Rather, critical geopolitics seeks to uncover the meanings of our technical descriptions of the world, how that knowledge is built up and represented. According to OTuathail:
As a concept, geopolitics is regularly evoked and knowingly used yet rarely problematised. There is not yet an adequate theoretical discussion of the functioning of geopolitics as a sign within critical geopolitics. Nor has there been an explicit theoretical discussion of how critical geopolitics should function and how it needs to engage what we have already identified as the geopolitical gaze. (1996, p.63)

Rather than assume as the Realist Geopolitics of Mackinder or Bowman that facts just exist and that it is the job of academics to interpret these facts in order to uncover general laws of space for the purpose of problem solving, critical geopolitics seeks to expose how writing geopolitics is an ideological act. Critical geopolitics makes two propositions. First, geographical depictions are not natural; images are crucial to geographical understanding, sometimes referred to as scripts. Second, giving order to space is determined by power to define and represent territories, states, cultures as danger, exceptional, moral, civilised. As Dalby observes:
Geopolitics is also about the crucially important power to define danger, and about the ability to describe the world in ways that specify appropriate political behaviours in particular contexts and to provide security against those dangers. (1998, p.295)

An info-structure exists to present certain definitions. After 9/11 the US State Department called in an advertising agency to run a press campaign, liaising with the White House information war room and Office of Strategic Influence at the Pentagon which places true/false news items (what are called white/black news) in foreign media. Critical geopolitics, therefore, seeks out how differences between us and them are constructed. Dalby refers to this constantly ongoing project as the Political Organisations to Generate Others (POGO). A binary of us/ them, inside/outside, foreign/domestic can already be detected in the depiction of heartland/rimland, east/west, north/south, and more recently of good/evil. As noted by Walker:
Inside particular states we have learned to aspire to what we like to think of as universal values and standards claims about the nature of the good society, freedom, democracy, justice, and all the rest. But these values and standards have in fact been constructed in relation to particular communities. They depend on a tacit recognition that these values and standards have been achieved only because we have been able to isolate particular 99

09 Human geography communities from those outside an isolation that implies the continuing legitimacy of war and violence. (1990, pp.1112 cited in Agnew 1994, p.61)

By drawing these constructions into the open, critical geopolitics attempts to destabilise neat geopolitics. In so doing, critical geopolitics does not offer a unified methodological approach. However, we can detect some frequently-employed devices. The first is the discursive construction of a frame for imagining dangers through the use of strategic signs. OTuathail (1996) argues that Vietnam became a strategic sign that the US should not get involved in Bosnia, reinforced by reference to the imagery of troops getting stuck in a quagmire or sinkhole, fighting an ethnic thug using unsophisticated methods, reinforced by reference to origins of the First World War and the Holocaust. As a UK Foreign Office is reported to have said, you have to remember they are all cannibals. Bosnia was constructed as a distant time/space, part of the Balkans not Europe, until that is the frame shifted to the threat of the war creating a balkanisation of Europe and as a sign for a regenerated US sense of mission (OTuathail, 1999, p.527). By the time of Kosovo, Prime Minister Tony Blair was able to legitimate intervention with a newfound vigour as a crusade for the heart of civilisation because:
[A]nd Kosovo is part of Europe. A short sea journey from Italy, a short drive from Greece. There is the Balkans, the first world war began in Sarajevo. (Blair, 1999)

A second device is the importance placed on popular geopolitics. To Dalby:

To construct critical political geographies is to argue that we must not limit our attention to a study of the geography of politics within pregiven, taken-for-granted, commonsense spaces, but investigate the politics of the geographical specification of politics. (1991, p.274)

The arenas of geopolitics in which spatial signifiers (codes, scripts) are presented include the info-scapes of novels, films, cartoons, music that construct geographical imaginations of difference, threat and measures to control others. Sharp (2000) has shown how the Readers Digest was important to the conduct of the Cold War, depicting the work of establishment figures from academia and military, emphasising stories of freedom and destiny, the naturalness of capitalism, Americans as honest, charitable, problem-solvers, and stories of individuals winning through to achieve wealth and status. Burton (1992) describes how the 1940s output of Disney was funded by the State Department keen to promote the US as a Good Neighbour to Latin America and show the truth about the American Way. Burton analyses Three Caballeros, featuring three cartoon figures, Donald Duck, Joe Carioca (parrot) and Panchito (a Mexican rooster) and three women (sister of Carmen Miranda, two Mexican singers). The film opens with Donald learning about Latin America (Uruguay and Antartica), then Brazil where he meets Carioca and Miranda, falls in love, moves to Mexico and meets Pancho, falls in love with various women to a music soundtrack (pastiche Mexicana), passing from Acapulco beach to a Mexico City nightclub where he hallucinates an erotic love scene. The bonding of the Good Neighbour through the Donald as Don Juan is played out through stereotypes and animalsexuality in which Donald appears an ambivalent dominant, smitten and confused character.
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The Three Caballeros holds to the script of others as exotic, violenceprone, childlike (in need of discipline insolent, lazy, emotional, questionable morals, superstitious), whose power is never quite up to the mark. In a piece of post-Panama invasion gung-ho journalism Newsweek magazine entitled an article From Wimp to World-Class leader to describe how George Bush had reduced Manuel Noriega to a mere shadow of the machete-waving gringo-hating dictatora two-bit intelligence chief from a Banana and Banking Republic. Referring back to an earlier meeting when Bush was head of the CIA (and funding Noriega), Newsweek suggests that the asymmetry between the two was already obvious:
The two intelligence chiefs contrasted in style and substance. Bush was lanky and refined, raised by a Brahmin New England Family. He towered over the five-foot-five inch Noriega. Noriega was mean-streets mestizo, the bastard son of his fathers domestic. Noriega offered his usual damp, limp handshake to Bushs firm grip. They were clearly uncomfortable with each other.

The popular image was of Bush (and hence the US) as a masculine, white sophisticate capable of grasping a worldview within a moral order, in line with the Presidents war on drugs and the invasions code name Operation Just Cause.3 Holed up in the Papal Nunciate in Panama City, Noriega was subject to the Psychological Operations Battalion (PsychOps) who drowned the air space with helicopters pumping out at full volume Voodoo Chile, Nowhere to Run, I Fought the Law and the Law Won, and Smugglers Blues. Panamanians, the US public as well as especially Cuba and Colombia could not be in much doubt of morality and force. The third device is what OTuathial calls the anti-geopolitical eye that disturbs the conventional frames of geopolitical discourse, and especially the invocation of panics, threats and the righteousness of alternatives, by using humour, satire, shock to mock, anger and ethics. This eye is not the opposite of geopolitics but a form of it. Good examples include Steve Bells cartoons, the reporting of Maggie OKane, Fergal Keane and John Pilger. In Bosnia, OKane showed the systematic scale of violence, the shelling of schools and markets, of safe areas, acts of genocide and individual suffering. Writing in The Guardian OKane reminded readers that Bosnia did not consist of ex-communists, proto-fascists, gypsies, thugs, but refugees, women and children, and that the supposedly objective strategies and speeches of politicians were taking place amidst daily killing. Adopting personal observation and first-person narrative OKanes anti-geopolitical eye reduced the distance between Bosnia and the reader, bringing morality into the picture (OTuathail, 1996). These subjective depictions counter the virtualisation of violence that represent virtuous virtual wars without casualties and victims, and which are brought ever closer to home by new technology as well as collaborations between the military, entertainment networks and universities. We should note that critical geopolitics can suffer from a discursive determinism in which the perceptions of other places are seen to determine foreign policy action. Dalby cites a claim by James Der Derian that the:
[First] Gulf War took place because those who wanted to resolve the disputes through violence won the war of representations before a shot was fired. Precisely because reality could be represented in particular ways political decisions could be taken, troops and materials moved and war fought.

As the rst real-time televised conict (war was never formally declared), 22,000 troops were deployed against a country with only a Defence Force and involved the largest parachute drop since 1945 despite a number of military bases in the Canal Zone.

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Mermin (1997), however, doubts whether the media is at this leading edge of policy. Looking at Somalia, Mermin suggests that the media did not lead the US to intervene but rather it followed briefings, eventually curious enough to send people who reported that the US should intervene. Against claims of constant media coverage of Somalia Mermin finds that in the six months prior to US airlift only six programmes longer than 30 seconds appeared on the major networks. By contrast CNN had been telling apocalyptic tales of Somalia for months with no effect. Mermin argues that the media set the volume of coverage but it was Washington that chose the channel. Political geographers must be wary that their deconstruction of realist geopolitical claims does not imply that there is always a truer, more real, and predetermined motive of how space influences political action. Activity 5.1 Using what you have learned about the ways in which the Cold War and its aftermath were spatialised, look at how Afghanistan and Iraq have been scripted as spaces of danger and freedom. Consider how the US intervention in both countries represented its new world mission and the implications for Europe and the Middle East. It might be useful to look at the Project for the New American Century (www.newamericancentury. org/index.html) as well as newspapers and recent journals.

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: define the nation-state discuss the spatial organisation of the Cold War discuss the complexities of post-Cold War ideas of disorder describe critical geopolitics.

Sample examination question

Huntington argues that the primary source of conflict after the Cold War will not be ideological or economic but cultural. Using at least two examples, consider how far you agree with Huntington?

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Section 3: Resources, population and sustainability

Section 3: Resources, population and sustainability

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Notes

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Chapter 6: Environment, resources and sustainability

Essential reading
Adams, W.M. Sustainability, in Cloke, P . et al. Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Bradshaw, M. Resources and development, in Daniels, P . et al. (eds) An Introduction to Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008). Burgess, J. Environmental knowledges and environmentalism, in Cloke, P . et al. Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Dalby, S. Environmental Governance, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Eden, S. Global and Local environmental problems, in Cloke, P . et al. Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Emel, J. et al. The Earth as Input: Resources, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Graham, E. and P . Boyle Population Crises: From the Global to the Local, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Jones, D.K.C. The Earth as Output: Pollution, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Meyer, W.B. and B.L. Turner The Earth Transformed: Trends, Trajectories and Patterns, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).

Further reading
Bannon, I. and P . Collier Natural Resources and Violent Conflict: Options and Actions. (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 2003). Ehrlich, P . The Population Bomb. (Ballantine Books, 1968). Ehrlich P .R. and A.H. Ehrlich The Population Explosion. (New York; London: Touchstone, 1991, c.1990). Harvey, D. Population, Resources and the Ideology of Science, Economic Geography, 50(3) 1974, pp.25677. Harvey, D. The New Imperialism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Hens, L. and B. Nath The Johannesburg Conference, Environment, Development and Sustainability, 5(12) 2003, pp.739. Le Billon, P . and F. El Khatib From free oil to Freedom Oil: Terrorism, War and US Geopolitics in the Persian Gulf, Geopolitics, 9(1) 2004, pp.10937. Lomborg, B. The Skeptical Environmentalist: measuring the Real State of the World. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). See www. lomborg.com for free Chapter 1. For critique of Lomborg see Scientific American, January 2002, and his response in the May edition [www. scientificamerican.com]. Lutz, W., W.C. Sanderson and S. Scherbov The End of World Population Growth in the 21st Century: New Challenges for Human Capital Formation and Sustainable Development. (London: Earthscan, 2004). Meadows, D. et al. Limits to Growth. (MIT Press, 1972). 105

09 Human geography Scientific American. Special Issue, September 2005, Crossroads for Planet Earth (includes articles by leading writers in sustainability debates). Myers, N. and J. Simon Scarcity or Abundance? A Debate on the Environment. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994). ORiordan, T. (ed.) Environmental Science for Environmental Management. (Harlow: Pearson Education 2000). Wackernagel, M. and W. Rees Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. (Gabriola Island, BC; Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1996). Weber, M. Competing political visions: WTO governance and green politics, Global Environmental Politics, 33(1) 2001, pp.92113. World Bank, 1997. Expanding the Measure of Wealth: Indicators of Environmentally Sustainable Development. www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSServlet? pcont=details&e id=000009265_3971113150949. World Resource Institute, 2005. World Resources 2005, The Wealth of the Poor: Managing Ecosystems to Fight Poverty. www.wri.org

Aims of the chapter

The chapter considers how geography and the social sciences have treated the relationships between man and environment, and how that relationship has become cast as a set of problems during the past 200 years. We survey some of the leading authors that, mostly, take a pessimistic stance on the ability of the earth to carry human activity. We look at some of the critiques of these ideas. The chapter does not look at specific interactions that concern desertification, floods, landslides, earthquakes or alleged changes to weather systems although some of these are discussed in the Essential reading. Rather, we concentrate on the international scale, noting nevertheless that national governments have become increasingly committed to the idea of sustainability. Finally, the chapter considers present resource and environmental debates.

Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: discuss key ideas that have formulated manenvironment relationships differentiate between the major philosophical positions within population and environmental debates critically discuss present-day environmental debates.

Introduction
I was once told an anecdote about a competition that took place among development practitioners sitting in a bar during a particularly dull international conference. The competition concerned resource depletion and development, and is called What if China?. The questioner takes a resource and a comparator country, one usually associated with a high consumption of that resource, and asks what if China were to consume the same quantity of resource per capita?. The answers to two questions as mentioned to me are accurate, although the answers themselves may be factually wrong. Question one: what if China ate as well as South Korea? Answer: in one year China would consume the worlds total trade in grain. Question two: What if China ate as much fish per capita as Japan? Answer: it would consumer the worlds total trade of fish in one year and
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50 per cent of the worlds stock of fish by end of year two. The anecdote sounds a warning for the future of resources if, as predicted, by 2050 the average person in China becomes as rich as the average Swiss in 2005 and the average person in India as rich as the average Israeli. The anecdote also serves to introduce a recurrent theme in the study of resources and sustainability, the expectation and fear that consumption, through changed tastes, income or population growth will exceed the availability of resources. This environmental pessimism can be traced back at least as far as 1600 BC when Cuneiform tablets show that the Babylonians feared a world already too full of people. Three millennia later, Thomas Malthus outlined his concerns of mannature relations during industrialisation in Europe, to the work of Rachel Carson in the 1960s, the Meadows Report of 1972, through the sustainability debates of the 1980s and the Rio Summit, and the 2002 Kyoto Protocol. Since at least the 1970s the pessimism has taken global proportions, projecting a belief that resource depletion will result in hunger and famine, to resource wars and deepen global warming. A recent comment in relation to the failure of signatories to Kyoto to cut carbon emissions noted that if the entire world stopped doing everything, China and India combined would make up the carbon saving from inactivity within nine months. Running through this chapter is a shift in thinking about the environment or resources (materials transformed by man from nature) from a concern with future scarcity to one of the future impacts of the existing use of the environment. While the distinction has ebbed in and out of writing, one might argue that at present the latter has predominance over the former at a global level, although at the level of communities and countries it is discussion of physical or economic scarcity that is likely to predominate.

Resource scarcity and the pessimists

Until the latter part of the twentieth century the world had experienced a faster than exponential growth in population, as well as an economic transition from agricultural subsistence to industrialisation and mass consumption. Populations left out of the latter transition have nevertheless experienced population growth, some agricultural transition and a shift to more urban living. At the beginning of this process, Thomas Malthus in an Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) predicted that the interrelation of population and resources would end in misery. His basic notion was that land was a fixed quantity and imposed limits on agricultural output whereas population was not limited in the short term and was increasing. Eventually a point would be reached whereby scarcity would ensue, leading to a diminishing return to labour and starvation, or to pressure on resources and war that would reduce population. Malthus regarded the checks on population growth war, famine and disease as positive, in the sense that his preferred solution, moral restraint, would not be forthcoming. In a benchmark article published in 1974 David Harvey took aim at the neutral objectivity of economics. One of Harveys targets was Malthus against whom he positions the views of Karl Marx. Malthus presents his deductive approach based on two postulates, that food is necessary to existence and passion between the sexes is constant. Having shown that the power of the latter is greater than the power of the earth to produce the former, it becomes a natural law that population will inevitably put pressure on subsistence. Malthus takes this position to argue against welfare assistance to the poor as the removal of positive checks (hunger)
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will only result in the expansion of their numbers. The only way forward is benign neglect. Harvey applies Marxs dialectical materialism to what Malthus calls overpopulation, distinguishing between technical and social division of labour, and introducing the concept of relative surplus population, caused by a different set of laws, capitalist accumulation (explored more fully in Chapter 2). Harvey indicates that the different perspective of Marx allows us to redefine terms that science regards as fixed, to think of technology not as an object external to society and move away from population as the problem the implication that control is the inevitable solution. At the time of Malthus the world population was, perhaps, one billion. By 1940 it had reached just over two billion and would double over the next 40 years. Population has increased but poverty had not. Somewhat differently from Harvey, other writers as depicted in the chapters by Jacquie Burgess and Sally Eden have approached the environmental and resource problem from the standpoint of social construction; the investment of meanings into particular phenomena, creating specific ways in which we can think about and address issues. A valuable example is the work of Rachel Carson, a biologist and advocate for the understanding of environment and pollution within a philosophical as well as scientific framework. Carsons work, especially the landmark Silent Spring (1962), highlighted the growing degradation of the environment, the loss of species, habits and biodiversity, culminating in a loss of quality of life. Carson warned that man could not reply on nature adapting to being tampered with and that relatively discreet interventions might have longer-term and wider consequences. She illustrated this last point by noting that DDT, used widely as a pesticide, might be affecting eggshell thickness of birds of prey (notably the bald eagle) leading to a consequential near-collapse of the food chain for other species. Carson argued that environmental management depended on peoples attitudes to and values about nature. Attacked as an interfering woman incapable of grasping science (even though she was more than a competent scientist) and as a communist (for which she was investigated) Carson was influential, especially in the US where her views fed into the Johnson administrations attempt to clean up roadsides and extend environmental protection, that led to DDT being banned in 1972. Although by no means a deep ecologist, Carson is often regarded as a forerunner of the Green Movement. Carsons views were contrary to the much-trumpeted achievements of the Green Revolution that was seen as removing Malthusian misery in the developing world. The Revolution promoted the use of technology, especially wheat and rice hybrids, combined with pesticides and irrigation, and was responsible for increasing yields and raising food output during the 1970s and 1980s by over ten per cent. For most Greens, however, the Revolution was anything but green. Although yields rose as irrigation increased from 100 million to 276 million hectares between 1950 and 2005, and presently irrigation accounts for about 86 per cent of developing country water use, the techniques benefited larger farmers, did little to address rural poverty as prices were determined by marketing boards established under the Green Revolution strategy (to make prices more stable) and output was undercut by subsidies in the global food system. Sometimes, subsidies against small-scale pro-poor agricultural development were hidden within aid programmes. Famously, US Public Law 480 (PL480) allowed developing countries to purchase highly-subsidised US surplus food exports using domestic (soft) currencies, thus undermining domestic production. Consequently, many developing countries became net food
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importers even when, as with Egypt between 1965 and 1980, agricultural production increased faster than population (2.7 per cent p.a. versus 2.2 per cent) (Mitchell, 1991). In some Sub-Saharan African countries about one-third of calorie intake was imported, a large part as PL480. By 2005, other subsidies to developed world producers were equivalent to $300 billion. Between Malthus and Carson we can see a shift from population as a primary concern to the environment. This shift, however, would take another two decades to fully emerge. In the meantime, in 1972, an influential group of scientists at MIT lead by Donella and Dennis Meadows compiled The Limits to Growth or Meadows Report which offered a series of doomsday forecasts based on population growth and an exponential rise in consumption against a linear expansion of resources. The Report based its analysis on proven reserves in 1970 divided by consumption levels to derive a Life Index, the point at which resources would run out at constant use. Over this Static Life Index the Report then outlined an Exponential Life Index, the point at which resources would run out assuming usage was increasing exponentially and the total resource base was five times proven reserves. Alarmingly, while the Static Life was quite long the Exponential Life Index suggested shortages within a generation and the total extended resource life (five times proven reserves against exponential consumption) was just a few decades further on at most. Aluminium, for example, had a static Life of 1,000 years, an Exponential Life Index of 31 years and a Resource Life assuming five times proven reserves of just 55 years. Although the Report was based on an early mega computer model, its appeal was largely the result of its vivid descriptions. In one passage, it describes the idea of a lily pad on a pond that doubles in size each year. Initially the pad is small; there is plenty of water visible in the pond. Indeed, until the penultimate year the pond is still neatly shared between water and pad, but in the last year the pad takes over the pond. Meadows warned not to rely on a sense that everything is ok at the moment. The Report predicted that not only would food become a problem but also industrial output would struggle by the early twenty-first century. The response would be a pushing of people to ever-more dangerous environmental conditions and an increase in disasters that were rarely natural. The Meadows Limits to Growth was published one year before OPEC increased oil prices fourfold, two years before Schumachers widelyread Small is Beautiful and four years after Paul Ehrlichs The Population Bomb. Ehrlich presented a Neo-Malthusian argument that population growth would lead to mass starvation. Adopting an even shorter time span than Meadows, Ehrlich predicted that the world would experience major famine between 1970 and 1985, and he identified India as in a situation impossible to attain food self-sufficiency in 1970 let alone feed an additional 200 million people by 1980. Unlike Malthus, Ehrlich was alive to the location of the population bomb, a problem of developing countries, and he advocated population control, including one-child families, a situation that is already a reality in many developed countries. While fertility has declined, technology and the opening of new land to agricultural production has increased total food output. Indeed, in absolute terms the world can feed itself. One question raised at this time was whether markets would respond efficiently to the scarcity of resources. The simple argument was that as a resource became scarce (supply declines) so prices would rise (if demand was constant or rising). A more complicated scenario depended on
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a distinction between proven and conditional reserves, because as prices rise so there are incentives to increase exploration and possibly locate more proven reserves thus bringing prices down once more. The counter suggestion is that as the most economically extracted resources are likely to be found first, then additional reserves will be more expensive than existing proven reserves, a point that is highly material dependent. Consider for example that oil in Alaska is more expensive to extract than in Texas or Saudi Arabia, but new reserves declared in Venezuela are much cheaper. More complicated still is whether there is a substitute for the material, as in the case of gas and coal, so that growing scarcity and/ or rising prices for coal may prompt conversion to gas. Finally, it will also depend on politics, the dramatic increase in oil prices in the early 1970s was a consequence of OPEC flexing its muscle, partly in an effort to break the developed world demand-side control of output and prices, partly in an effort to demonstrate the power of Middle East producers in context of Syria and Egypts conflicts with Israel. The belief that markets are adaptive was put forward most controversially by Julian Simon, former Professor of Management at Princeton University, who argued that the real price of raw materials tended to fall over time in constant terms because technology would reduce extraction costs, any short-term increase in price would motivate an immediate exploration response, and consumers had ready alternatives. Simon advocated his views in Science (1980), chiming with the neo-conservative movement that brings Ronald Reagan to the White House and turning back environmental legislation, and provoking animosity from the Greens. Famously, Simon held a bet with Paul Ehrlich that any $1,000 shopping basket of five metals in 1990 would be cheaper than in 1980, with the difference paid to the winner. In 1990 Ehrlich paid Simon $576. Debate still continues as to whether the bet demonstrates the ability of markets to respond to scarcity. Was the timeframe too short? Who was to know that discovery of proven reserves would increase faster than consumption? Was Ehrlichs choice of copper as fundamental to his baskets performance a sensible one given that copper is relatively easy to recycle and major producers such as Chile were orienting output to exports? Were prices in 1980 unusually high because of OPEC raising oil prices and fell due to recession? Did geopolitical factors such as the US, and latterly the WTO, influence to undermine emergent cartels have an influence (see Chapter 11)? Certainly by the mid-1990s the world prices of primary products were lower in real terms than any time since 1930. The SimonEhrlich bet does indicate an important lesson, the idea of a spectrum of resource conditions within a market situation. At one extreme we can imagine that many resources have a finite limit (a resource base) and at the other extreme that part of that limit has already been or is being used. Between those points, however, it is useful to think of proven, conditional, and hypothetical or speculative reserves. The former are reserves that are proven to exist and can be exploited at present price conditions and technological readiness. Conditional reserves exist but are presently uneconomic, because prices are too low against costs, or require a technological shift to make exploitation possible at all or unaffordable. Lastly, hypothetical reserves are believed to exist based on previous experience (geological knowledge for example) but might not be extractable. At the present time, oil in Angola could be considered to be a proven reserve whereas oil in Somalia might best be thought of as conditional. The point is that the price of proven reserves for one resource can be determined by the quantity or re-categorisation of other reserves; physical and economic exhaustion are related but not directly.
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Population crisis, what crisis?

Since 1970, however, world population growth has been about 1.2 per cent per annum. By 2020 a reasonable prediction is that population growth will slow but absolute growth will reach just under seven billion. By the highest predictions, world population will be 14 billion by 2100, medium predictions put a figure of 9.1 billion by 2050 with replacement thereafter so that population in 2100 will also be around nine billion, and a low prediction claims a high of eight billion in about 2030 declining thereafter to below present-day levels by 2100. The argument by the 1990s therefore had moved away from a simple populationresource relationship, away from more people depleting resources more than fewer people to a more sophisticated analysis of the quality of resource use. Fewer, richer and less environmentally aware people can deplete resources and cause more greenhouse effects than more people leading more autarkic and sustainable lives. This realisation was evident with the observation that CO2 emissions were rising faster than population and sometime in the 1960s had probably exceeded the absorptive capacity of the oceans and land. By 1980, Annual Fossil-Fuel Emissions exceeded absorptive capacity more than twofold, by 2020 output is expected to almost double again to a level three times higher than absorptive capacity. By pessimistic scenarios emissions in 2050 could be eight times absorptive capacity (reported in Scientific American, 2005, p.25). Moreover, there has also been a concern about the distribution of the worlds population and growth, even if at lower levels than were feared in the 1970s. While the slopes of most graphs appear to become more shallow, the location of the new populations will not be in Europe, which is likely to experience absolute population decline, or in the US, which is predicted to double its population in the next 5080 years, but in the developing world. Between 2005 and 2050 world population will increase by about 2.5 billion, or more than the worlds population in 1950, and virtually all this growth will be in sub-Saharan Africa, Central and East Asia. In these areas population growth will be disproportionately urban, poor and will result in a population profile through the next century whereby half the population will be under 25 (compared to developed countries where 1:3 will be over 60, compared to 1:12 in 1960). Will this population be able to feed itself? Assuming everyone was vegetarian, the world produces enough grain to feed a population of 10 billion. Two problems intervene, however, to create a food problem. First, is how choice and wealth make sufficiency an unacceptable level of consumption for just about everyone not forced to consume at this level. The omens are not good if we look, for example, at the changing daily energy consumption over time: that is, the total energy consumed to sustain an average person in terms of food production, material welfare, heat and power. When man was embarking on the first agricultural revolution, the domestic husbandry of animals and plants, s/he consumed 412,000 kcals per capita. By the time towns were being formed, per capita consumption was 26,000 kcals and with industrialisation it had become 50,000 kcals per capita. Today, it is believed that energy consumption is about 3,000,000 kcals per capita. There seems little evidence that people seem willing to withhold their desire to consume as they get richer, as society changes. Second, food is not produced in the same location as it needs to be consumed, creating a market in food. However, the people most in need of food above subsistence and unable to produce it themselves are also
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those with the least means to buy food. Thus, while the FAO World Food Survey indicates that average food production has increased by at least 0.5 per cent faster than population growth, with the less-developed countries showing productivity growth much higher than the world average, food production per head is 25 per cent higher than in 1961 and the real price of food has fallen by some 50 per cent, improvement has been uneven. In the 30 years (196191) food production per head in sub-Saharan Africa fell by 20 per cent. In India with a national food surplus and modest exports 221 million people are hungry, 852 million people worldwide are chronically or acutely malnourished and UNICEF claims that 40,000 children per day starve to death. As Bradley and Carter pointed out:
a paradox whereby a global production system has the capacity to feed the world, but does not do so because people are too poor. In extremis, such is the logic of capitalism that the very fact that the poor of the Third World are starving is the reason why they cannot be fed. (1990, p.121).

Even so, a part of the second problem is contained by the first. Indicators of sufficient quantity for survival have changed over time and space (urban), and the more objectively sounding Recommended Daily Allowance is about 20 per cent accurate, depends on nutrition mix and quantity of plate waste (10 per cent in most developed country diets). Calorie intake determination of height-to-age (stunted) or weight-toheight (wasted) is measured against a young, active, male child in a developed country. By this measure many adults in developing countries register as malnourished against the average consumption of a child in a developed country, yet they are not registered as malnourished as they are not children even though the measure for children is supposed to gauge survival regardless that most go on to adulthood. By the 1980s debates had moved from a concern with populationfood resources toward a broader array of social concerns and the environment. While pessimism has remained a forte of the subject, doomsday scenarios have generally moved from centre stage. The shift is captured by the notion of sustainable development.

Sustainable development
Although sustainability offers a verbal flourish, but arguably, at its core, lies a theoretical black hole it has nevertheless captured a popular imagination (Adams, 2005, p.288). The term entered general use following the UN sponsored World Commission on Environment and Development report Our Common Future published in 1987. Known as The Brundtland report, after the Commission chairperson, former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, the report defined sustainability as development that meets the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Quickly, other organisations were promoting their vision of sustainable development:
Sustainable human development is development that not only generates economic growth but distributes its benefits equitably; that regenerates the environment rather than destroying it; that empowers people rather than marginalising them. It gives priority to the poor, enlarging their choices and opportunities, and provides for their participation in decisions affecting them. It is development that is pro-poor, pro-nature, pro-jobs, prodemocracy, pro-women, and pro-children. (UNDP) 112

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In broad terms, sustainable development is an attempt to integrate the social, economic and ecological concerns: economic development should be a concept of welfare and only economic growth in terms of market activity: a view motivated by the observation that the worlds poor were not able to meet their basic human needs under solely economic development conditions social issues, particularly inter- and intra-generational equity of basic human needs rather than consumer-oriented wants should not be jeopardised by current actions ecological constraints should recognise that developed countries in particular should limit social and economic activities to within the capacity of the earth to assimilate and renew. By integrating these dimensions sustainable development has brought an ethical concern for future generations and the distribution of wellbeing between North and South. Actualising sustainability has stressed the adoption of a Precautionary Principle to cope with uncertainty and of participation, seeing decision-making as a matter for civil society as much or more than for scientists. Sustainability also picked up on globalisation, that the world is increasingly connected (see Box 6.1). Box 6.1 A Connected World About 40 per cent of the earths land surface is devoted to forest. Estimates vary but a conservative figure is that 0.8 per cent of this forest is being lost each year. About 38 per cent of deforestation is due to logging, mostly inducing the loss of primary forest. About 1.4 per cent of the earths land surface, however, holds the greatest biodiversity and those areas have lost 70 per cent of their primary vegetation. In 199798 the burning of forest areas in Southeast Asia created what was called The Haze, a severe pollutant event that hung over Indonesia and Malaysia affecting 70 million people. About 5,000 people in one region of Indonesia alone were left with smog-related disease, and the loss of tourist income; disruptions to transport and industry was estimated to be worth $1.4 billion in 1997 alone. Longer-term impacts such as soil erosion from the fires and poverty-induced migration will cost the local economy yet more. Whether the fires were the result of loggers seeking to open new areas to agriculture is not clear. Nor, as some have argued, is it known whether the fires were precipitated by the need for companies and farmers to get money fast in the aftermath of the financial crises that were hitting the region. Some NGOs and international organisations have promoted the use of ecological certification for timber products. The difficulty here is that certification of international trade covers only a small potential proportion of the trade in timber, probably less than six per cent. Most timber is consumed domestically. Another suggestion is for a better balance to be found between forest conservation (and ecological carrying capacity) and agriculture. Green consumerism has led the way here with attempts to raise the retained value of a commodity in the producer area rather than later in the commodity chain (see Chapter 12) and to use consumer preference to raise environmental standards. While the extension of cattle ranching into virgin forest received a lot of bad press in the 1980s, and rightly so, in the last few years the extension of alternative crops such as coffees, cocoa, palm oil and soybean have begun to cause concern. Around 80 per cent of the Ivory Coasts forest has been lost to cocoa cultivation. Although the trade in green commodities is low only about one per cent of coffee imported into the US meets ecological and social licensing criteria joint ventures with conservation and biosphere park agencies in developing countries have yielded some results. (Sources: Haigh, M. 1999. Deforestation in Pacione, M. (ed.) Applied Geography: Principles and Practice. (Routledge, 1999); Hardner, J. and R. Rice Rethinking Green Consumerism, Scientific American, May 2002, pp.7177.)
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Sustainability has also been flexible to geographical scale, somewhat unlike the doomsday global models. An important example is the idea of the Ecological Footprint. Taking an old idea, how much land do humans use to supply resources for consumption, Mathis Wackernagel contributed the idea that in order to better measure the load imposed on the environment we need to include the additional land required for the disposal of waste and ecosystem recovery. The Footprint uses the biologically-productive land area as the base unit of measurement, which allows the conversion of energy use into land area. So, for example, energy use is converted into the area of forests required to absorb the resultant CO2 emissions (note the calculation uses fossil fuel as the principal means of energy generation; a shift to nuclear fuel would not be so readily convertible to forest area as CO2 generation is minimal). The resultant indicator is easily adapted to specific scales, for example, to measure the impact of a city on its immediate hinterland. The Footprint, therefore, can be one means of measuring urban sustainability. Consequently, Londons footprint is 293 times its geographical area, in other words the ecological impact of London is larger than the area of the British Isles! Wackernagels assessment using the Footprint is that in 1960 humans used about 70 per cent of the biosphere but that by 1999 humans were using an unsustainable 120 per cent. Most important, sustainability has fed into policy. The Brundtland report met a growing demand for action to tackle environmental concern. In 1992 the United Nations Environment Programme organised the Rio Summit to seek consensus on a range of global and local measures. Rio was a remarkable achievement for providing simultaneously a point of focus to the importance of the environment as having both intrinsic and welfare value, in a largely unfocussed outcome document with 40 chapters and 600 pages. Rio motivated governments and international agencies to address what could be done to address environment concerns while maintaining or even improving welfare/quality of life. Environmental management has subsequently become mainstreamed into planning and design, waste has become the subject of taxation and tariffs, campaigns have advocated turning off electrical devices on standby (saving five per cent of domestic electricity in North American and European homes) and closing the gap on 20 per cent of homes still without heat insulation (see Eden, 2005). National and cross-border parks have increased in number, scale and proficiency of management (see Adams, 2005), governments have set out incentives for the private sector to regard the environment as a business rather than a cost. Some unlikely examples of good practice have emerged such as DuPont which has raised production nearly 30 per cent while cutting energy use by seven per cent and greenhouse emissions by 72 per cent, saving the company about $2 billion. Sustainable development has been a boon for a wide range of environmental groups. A frequently referred to table to capture the spectrum of environmental thought is presented in Table 6.1. Sustainable development is usually supported by both accommodating technocentrics and communalist (or soft) ecocentrics (Table 6.1). More efficient energy use is a case in point. Let us assume that a plant is producing 10 convertible units of energy (e.g. electricity) for every 100 units of input (e.g. a fossil fuel). Ninety units are lost from intended use which should alert technocentrics to discover technological solutions. More efficient use, however, can also play a role. If the efficiency by which consumption can be improved, perhaps it can be doubled, then for the same quantity of output the plant only needs half the energy units of input; generating 10
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units of electricity will require 50 units of fossil fuel even though the losses from generation to use remain the same. A weak point in the application of sustainable development approaches is that under most scenarios total resource consumption will go up as economies grow. One result has been a new call to address the relationship between environment and the economy. Technocentric Extreme Cornucopian Resource exploitative, growthoriented position. Economic growth ethic in material value terms. Maximise Gross National Product. Taken as axiomatic that unfettered market mechanisms or central planning (depending on political ideology) in conjunction with technological innovation will ensure infinite substitution possibilities capable of mitigating longrun physical resource scarcity. Accommodating Resource conservationist and managerial position. Infinite substitution is not thought realistic but sustainable growth is a practicable option as long as certain resource management rules (e.g. for renewable resource sustainable yield management are followed). Communalist Resource preservationist position Pre-emptive macroenvironmental constraints on economic growth are required, because of physical and social limits. Decentralised socio-economic system is necessary for sustainability. Ecocentric Deep Ecology Extreme preservationist position. Minimum resource take socio-economic system (e.g. based on organic agriculture and deindustrialisation). Acceptance of bioethics (i.e. non-conventional ethical thinking which confers moral rights or interests on nonhuman species).

Table 6.1: Environmental Ideologies (Source: adapted from ORiordan, T. and K. Turner Annotated Reader in Environmental Planning and Management (Elsevier, 1983))

A new scarcity and deep ecology

In the new scarcity argument, pessimism is not motivated by the idea that resources will run out but that the resultant pollution from their use will destroy fragile ecosystems and chemical cycles. Prominent in this argument is the need to rethink how economists understand and measure welfare. A key thinker in this domain is Herman Daly, a former economist at the World Bank and presently a professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Daly has promoted the idea of an economic limit to environmental resource use; a point when marginal disutility meets and then exceeds marginal utility. Beyond this point we are embarking upon uneconomic growth and this economic limit is reached before the catastrophe of many environmental models. Thus, if the world understands the environment and resource use from the viewpoint of utility maximisation then it will curtail depletion sooner rather than later.

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The premise is based on the idea that we need to rethink economics so that man-made capital is no longer substitutable for natural capital, as most economists believe. That at best might mean an argument to maintain both the sum of man-made and natural capital. Daly uses the example of fishing to indicate that increasing capital (boats) means little if there is less natural capital (fish). Yet, a measure of GDP makes no distinction between boats or fish, the two appear to be substitutable. There is no account taken of depreciation of either man-made or natural capital. Yet GDP does include the cost of cleaning up the environment as a plus through the incomes generated. But Daly argues that these are defensive expenditures (intermediate costs of production) and should not be in GDP . Putting a value on environmental degradation and what it costs to deal with it, as well as other adjustments, would bring GDP down. Indeed, looking at a more rounded measure of well-being it seems that the negative factors in the sustainability of economic welfare have risen faster than the positive ones, even as GDP has grown (see World Bank, 1997). Dalys argument is that economists (and international development agencies) have conceived of sustainability in weak terms. Sustainability implies a commitment to handing over a non-declining package of capital assets to future generations. Sustainability is about not eating into the total capital stock the mix between physical and natural capital is not important and generating savings. What is put back into the environment less depreciation of minerals, energy and forestry stocks minus CO2 damage. Newer thinking, and much closer to deep ecology views, is for strong sustainability whereby substitutability is not possible. Some environmental services (such as assimilation of carbon) have no substitutes. Therefore, we need to identify the critical non-substitutable resources and work within these limits ecological assets must be protected. Deep ecologists argue that the environment has existence value; nature has value independent of human values, a feature of the discourse of many environmental movements, many of which also take a lead from feminist, new age religion and mannature spirituality. The baseline is a conceptualisation of lifestyle, away from an emphasis on mass consumption towards a frugal localism congruent with the carrying capacity of immediate areas. In a green/red and green/black alliance of environmentalists, socialists and anarchists, the ethos of voluntary simplicity extends to an attack on capitalism, most recently free trade (Weber, 2001). A complicated triumvirate of interests has emerged in the past decade and especially since the riots in Seattle in 1999 at the time of the World Trade Organization meeting. Then a phalanx of NGOs and social movements proclaimed that free trade was anti-environmental, not least as it envisaged less national and international regulation. By the Doha Round of trade talks in 2001, some NGOs had leveraged influence within the WTO for more environmental measures to be incorporated into trade. This alignment for raising the environmental debate has been supported by many developed countries, especially within the EU, but has alienated many NGOs from developing countries. The developing country argument is that WTO environmental (and other agreements) will dampen their economic growth by establishing a green protectionism against their products while not doing enough to penalise past (and even present) polluting practices in the developed world (Table 6.2). Yet, EU support for fairer free trade to benefit developing countries is likely to depend on an environmental component, meaning that the future of fair trade may depend on accepting more environmental regulation, and vice versa. Collectively, since 2000, developing countries have contributed more total carbon emissions than the US, Europe and Japan combined.

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Country US China Russia Japan India Germany Canada UK South Korea Italy France Mexico

Per cent of World Emissions 24 4 6 5 5 4 2 2 2 2 2 2

Emissions per Capita (Metric Tons) 5.4 0.7 2.7 2.5 0.3 2.8 4.2 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.7 1.1

Table 6.2: Carbon emissions from fossil fuel

(Source: R. Doyle, Greenhouse Follies, Scientific American, April 2002, p.17)

Both recent international agreements such as the 10-year follow-up to Rio, the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002 (Hens and Nath, 2003), and recent research such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (www.maweb.org/en/index.aspx) have stressed that good environmental management also requires addressing poverty in the developing world. International agencies agree that just shipping pollution to the developing world (Box 6.2) with aid bribes is unacceptable, but there is growing consensus that in a connected world industrialisation and resultant pollution in developing countries has impacts on the environmental quality of all countries. Box 6.2: World Bank Memorandum, 1991 Chief Economist Larry Summers wrote: Just between you and me, shouldnt the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs? I can think of three reasons: 1. The measurement of the costs of health-impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortalityI think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. 2. The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. Ive always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted 3. The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income-elasticitywhile production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is non-tradable. Author note Essentially Summers was arguing that the value of a clean environment in the developed world exceeds the value of the quality of life in the developing, encouraging developed world industries to pollute the developing as a way to clean up the developing. Pollution is moved but it is not reduced.

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Global warming and new questions on science

The environmental concern today, of course, is less the physical scarcity of resources or even their economic cost but the impact of use on climate change. Predictions of warming during the twenty-first century range from one to higher estimates of nearly six degrees Celsius. Tackling warming has prompted new regulations, taxes, and greater investment in wind, solar and geothermal energy sources that presently account for about two to three per cent of demand but which are increasing by more than economic growth or population increase, and are expected to meet 1020 per cent of demand by 2050, as well as calls for looking again at nuclear power. One of the latest buzz approaches is carbon trading. In effect carbon trading allows one geographical area (a country, state or city) to appropriate the ecological capacity of another area in order to continue the emission of CO2. Areas are awarded emission limits and future targets: the allocation to countries in Europe is less than demand creating a shortfall that must be purchased via certificates. Certificates (or permits) cover one metric ton of carbon dioxide. The win-win idea is that the trade in certificates will transfer financial resources from polluting areas to less polluting, making it good business not to pollute and for present polluters to shift from higher to lower pollution activities as the cost of carbon certificates rises. Indeed the trade has become big business and the price of certificates has risen from nine (Euros) per ton to 24 between late 2004 and mid-2005 (so high that the certificate cost of burning coal became greater than the cost of the coal itself). According to estimates by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set up in 1988, stabilising carbon emission at about twice pre-industrial levels by 2100 will cost between $1 and eight trillion. Some observers have argued that this cost is too high and not worth sacrificing economic growth and lower living standards, others that the science behind some of the environmental claims is far more uncertain than presented and there are better options for spending this kind of money. One voice in this debate is Danish political scientist, Bjorn Lomborg, who 20 years on from Harveys critique of Malthus has made a new assault on the objectivity of science. Lomborg claims that science has supported a litany of fears natural resources are running out, population is growing and we will have less to eat, species are becoming extinct and ecosystems are collapsing, global warming is inevitable and must be tackled. Contrary to the computer-aided story telling Lomborg believes that energy and natural resources have become more abundant, there is more food available, rates of species extinction are quite low, and pollution is both physically transient and improves with income. The latter is his most controversial claim, especially extending the argument to suggest that global warming is unlikely to prove devastating and that an inappropriate response to it might be worse than the problem itself. Lomborg takes sight of The Meadows Report as a well-known comparator to his views. He notes, like Simon, that the price of raw materials has fallen in real terms for most of the past century and a half despite increasing demand as proven reserves have increased at a greater rate. Justification for his arguments concerning population and food are covered above in the critique of Malthus and Ehrlich, although Lomborg pays insufficient attention to who is consuming the additional food and he underemphasises the problem of malnutrition in many parts of the world. Similarly, on biodiversity some of his numbers seem selected to support
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a preconceived contrarian argument. He indicates, for example, that although Puerto Rico has lost 99 per cent of its forest cover over 400 years only (his emphasis) seven from 60 species of bird have become extinct. The only is clearly subjective, how many of the seven became existent in recent years rather than over 400, how many more are endangered or depend on forest habitats remains unclear. It is to the fourth point on climate change, however, that Lomborg has been most roundly critiqued. The notion that pollution declines with income is predicated on what has happened in a number of developed countries (and London is one of his key examples), and depends on a political economy that has not until recently applied to Eastern European countries. The idea is a version of the Environmental Kuznets Curve that suggests that as economic growth increases pollution rises and then falls. The application of this observation to global warming, however, has been controversial. Lomborg takes a lower-end of the IPCCs prediction that global temperatures are likely to rise by about two to three degrees by 2100 and that the cost of change, mostly to developing countries, amounts to $5 trillion. Lomborg wonders whether the motivation to act is intuitive rather than a balanced assessment of the costs of action against the costs of inaction. He argues for example that meeting the Kyoto protocol targets will cost $150250 billion annually but will only postpone global warming impacts by about six years in 2100. He asks that if warming disproportionately affects the poor then why not use this money more directly and immediately to improve access to drinking water. With $150 billion this problem could be addressed in one year, and in year two another problem can be tackled and so on. Lomborgs scepticism points us to how little consensus is related to the big issues of the day and that another perspective can arrive at a markedly different set of solutions. Not surprisingly groups that believe it is not worth sacrificing economic prosperity to environmental intervention have championed Lomborg. Many scientists and Green groups, however, have attacked his work, its reliance on costbenefit approaches, the selective use of data and especially its conclusions. As Schneider has noted, Lomborg picks and chooses his data, and extrapolates when it suits, citing his extension of Kyoto interventions from their application up to 2012 all the way to 2100. In any case even assuming just two per cent economic growth per annum over the same period people will be 10 times richer, against which even $8 trillion paid over the earlier years would not be noticed. And, the idea of a trade-off between the cost of meeting Kyoto and providing access to sanitation in one year fails to note that the costs of Kyoto result from thousands of small measures in thousands of different places, and while these might be worth $150 billion this sum could not be captured and redirected. Lomborg, therefore, unpicks the neutrality of science but is prone to representing his own subjective account as objective because of how he fashions numbers and argument. Finally, we might make a speculative observation that the edge of critical debate has shifted once more, from environmentalism back to resources, and away from physical scarcity or impact to geopolitical dependence. Are the motives to intervene in order to access resources today that different from when George Kennan (mentioned in Chapter 5), in 1948 while Head of Policy Planning Staff, noted that policy had to maintain a situation whereby the US had 50 per cent of the worlds wealth and only 6.3 per cent of the population:

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09 Human geography without positive detriment to our national security[Thus] We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefactionWe should cease to talk about vague andunreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratisation[Instead the US should concern itself with] the protection of and access to our raw materials, some of which may be inconveniently located in other countries.

While conflict to gain access to some of these resources, such as diamonds and other precious materials, can be explained through greed and grievance, conflicts to secure other resources such as water respond to and provoke geopolitical concerns (Bannon and Collier, 2003). Looking at oil, and with events over the past decade in Kuwait, Angola, Venezuela and Iraq in mind, Harvey (2003) claims witness to what he calls the New Imperialism. For Harvey US hegemonic power requires accumulation through dispossession for an economy that has failed to retain competitiveness with China, Mexico and even parts of the EU. It is thus resource dependence rather than physical scarcity that determines conflicts (Le Billon and El Khatib, 2004). Some countries then are likely to experience a resource curse, internally unstable as greed motivates conflict and under the watchful eye of outside strategists keen to control resources for national security. Activity 6.1 The Green or Environmental Movement asks us to Think Global, Act Local. How Green are you? Keep a diary of your resource consumption for one week. Record food consumption, mileage and mode of transport, calculate water and electricity use (refer to bills if you have them, and include heating or air conditioning), include clothes or other items purchased, acquisition of newspapers and so on. At the end of the week try converting this total resource consumption into carbon units or kcals. Was it possible? Can you estimate your consumption of air conditioning while shopping at the mall or working in an office? Throughout the week how many signs advised you to consume less and what was their proportion compared to the adverts telling you to consume more? Have you or your community taken active measures to consume less, recycle more or monitor pollution? What is the level of environmental awareness where you are, who is more/less aware and why? What incentives (positive) or disincentives (penalties) do you think would work, locally, for a real difference to be made?

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: discuss key ideas that have formulated manenvironment relationships differentiate between the major philosophical positions within population and environmental debates critically discuss present-day environmental debates.

Sample examination question

At the beginning of the twenty-first century there are more reasons than ever to be an environmental pessimist. Critically evaluate this statement.

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Chapter 7: Population movements

Essential reading
Champion, T. Demographic Transformations in Daniels, P . et al. (eds) An Introduction to Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008). Dwyer, C. Diasporas in Cloke, P . et al. (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Koser, K. Migrants and refugees, in Cloke, P . et al. (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005).

Further reading
Adelman, H. Modernity, Globalisation, Refugees and Displacement, in Ager, A. (ed.) Refugees: Perspectives on the Experience of Forced Migration. (Pinter, 1999) pp.83110. Becker, A. and T. Havinga Asylum Applications in the European Union, Journal of Refugee Studies, 11(3) 1998, pp.24566. Cohen, R. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. (London: Routledge, 2008). Fass, S. Innovations in the Struggle for Self-Reliance: The Hmong Experience in the United States, International Migration Review, 20(2) 1986, pp.35180. Harris, J. and M. Todaro Migration, Unemployment and Development: a two-sector analysis, American Economic Review, (60) 1970, pp.12642. Jokisch, B. and J. Pribilsky The Panic to Leave: Economic Crisis and the New Emigration from Ecuador, International Migration, (40) 2002, pp.7499. King, R., G. Lazaridis and C. Tsardanidis (eds) Eldorado or Fortress? Migration in Southern Europe. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999). Koser, K. and H. Lutz The New Migration in Europe: Contexts, Constructions and Realities, in Koser, K. and H. Lutz (eds) The New Migration in Europe: Social Constructions and Social Realities. (Macmillan, 1998) pp.117. Koser, K. and N. Al-Ali New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home. (Routledge, 2002). Lewis, W.A. Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour, Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies, (22) 1954, pp.13991. Martin, M.T. Fortress Europe and Third World Immigration in the Post-Cold War Global Context, Third World Quarterly, 20(4) 1999, pp.82137. Mertenson, H. and J. McCarthy In General, No Serious Risk of Persecution: Safe Country of Origin Practices in Nine European states, Journal of Refugee Studies, 11(3) 1998, pp.30425. Portes, A. and J. Borocz Contemporary Immigration: Theoretical Perspectives on its Determinants and Modes of Incorporation, International Migration Review, 23(3) 1989, pp.60630. Ravenstein, E.G. The Laws of Migration, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 48(2) 1885, pp.167235. Samers, M. Immigration, ethnic minorities, and social exclusion in the European Union: a critical perspective, Geoforum 29(2) 1998, pp.12344. Sassen, S. Guests and Aliens. (The New Press, 1999). Tacoli, C. Changing ruralurban interactions in sub-Saharan Africa and their impact on livelihoods, IIED Briefing Paper Series on RuralUrban Interactions and Livelihoods Strategies, 2002. www.iied.org/pubs/pdf/full/10505IIED.pdf Valtonen, K. Resettlement of Middle Eastern Refugees in Finland: The Elusiveness of Integration, Journal of Refugee Studies, 11(1) 1998, pp.3860. Voigt-Graf, C. Towards a Geography of Transnational Spaces: Indian Transnational Communities in Australia, Global Networks, 4(1) 2004, pp.2549. 121

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Aims of the chapter

In this chapter I want to consider one of the longest-standing concerns of human geography, the movement of people across space. Specifically, we will look at how geographers understand the process of migration, especially in the context of moves from rural to urban areas. The chapter then looks at trends in international migration, including the study of refugees and asylum seekers, and introduces the concept of Diaspora. The chapter considers these movements against a background of geopolitical concerns during the Cold War and since. Finally, we consider key concepts that affect both internal and international migration, namely how people integrate and assimilate into host societies.

Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: describe what factors influence the decision to migrate differentiate between refugee, forced migrant and asylum seeker, in a wider context discuss the complexity of the concept of integration.

Theories and patterns of migration

For centuries people have migrated to find work, join a partner, claim an inheritance, or fulfil wanderlust. Theories, however, have either tended to concentrate on only one motive to movement, usually economic, or to the rather more vague notion of attraction to bright lights. Of course, if migration were simply a matter of individuals in search of better economic opportunities then the movement of people from most rural areas to urban areas, and from developing to highly-developed countries would be truly massive. The realisation that there are other factors and an awareness of more diverse characteristics of migrant populations have encouraged a broader set of understandings. Today, we tend to understand migration as a consequence of or mediated by processes ranging from the economy, including brain drain and care chains, disaster reaction and political instability, to social (or socialised) networks that foment short-term movements for education, health, jobs or experience. As early as 1885 Ernest Ravenstein attempted to systematically analyse migration. Looking to the UK censuses of 1871 and 1881 he attempted to build a series of natural laws. Initially, he proposed that most migrants only travelled short distances, more urban residents migrate more than rural, women migrate more than men, although men migrate further than women. Interested in locating points of equilibrium Ravenstein argued that city-ward migration is compensated by flows in the opposite direction, mostly to the wider metropolitan area, and that regions of population loss will become attractive to new migrants. The scale and timeframe of Ravensteins analysis, however, concentrating on the counties of the UK, meant that he underplayed longer-distance migration. In the 1840s, for example, the UK received 1.3 million people from Ireland and from 1882 to 1905 it received 120,000 Jews, mostly from Eastern Europe. In turn, the UK lost millions of people to the US, South America and the colonies, many of them permanent, non-urban and family moves. By the mid-twentieth century with the largest flows of migration taking place in the developing world, theories put forward by Arthur Lewis and
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Michael Todaro emphasised the importance of wage differentials between urban and rural areas. Lewis proposed a dualistic view of the economy characterised by a rural sector with an unlimited supply of labour (i.e. the marginal productivity of labour in agriculture was zero or negative) and an urban modern sector composed of entrepreneurs who saved and invested profits and offered wages approximately 30 per cent higher than rural wages (Lewis, 1954, p.151). People, Lewis argued, would move from rural to urban areas. The difficulty with a simple equilibrium model, however, was that while urban wages were higher than rural wages, many people in cities appeared to find un- or under-employment. For Lewis, whose interest was linking migration to a more general thinking on economic growth, under-employment was only temporary until such time as growth created jobs to be filled. Todaro, however, proposed that migration responded to the expected rather than the real incomes of migrants. To Todaro, migration to cities would continue even when the chances of obtaining a job are small because the large ruralurban wage gap, possibly as much as 80100 per cent, would mitigate against the high unemployment rates. While both Lewis and Todaro offer a grossly simplified model, they do suggest that migration is a rational and conscious decision, and that people come to cities for work rather than to sit idly by as stereotypes often suggest. In the half century since Lewis was writing, we have gained greater empirical insights into the migratory process and are better able to trace changes in migration patterns over time. First is an understanding that migration often involves high levels of interaction between rural and urban areas. One of the most obvious manifestations of this interaction is temporary migration (or sojourning). As a response to seasonal declines in agricultural productivity, households in West Africa, for example, will send members to the city for a short while to gain vocational skills or for access to health care. According to Tacoli (2002) in the Sahel region, 5080 per cent of rural households may have more than one household member who has migrated away. Once located in towns and cities, however, most migrants take care to retain contacts with rural areas in order to preserve rights to land or contacts with extended family members. In many parts of the world this contact is increasingly important, as the transmission of remittance income becomes a principal source of capital for agriculture, housing consolidation, coverage of medical and education bills (Jokisch, 2002). In 2004, remittance income from the US to Latin America equalled $38 billion, greater than foreign direct investment, with $17 billion going to Mexico and $2 billion to El Salvador, a contribution equivalent to 16 per cent of the countrys GDP . In extremis, urban and rural contact may encourage reverse migration from cities to countryside, that may be difficult to explain by wage gaps alone, but may have something to do with either existential quality of life issues or a desire to be close to a family home in order to die or receive palliative care. Whether we are concerned with South-east England, metropolitan New York, Manila or Johannesburg, seen from the viewpoint of flows of people, money and information, the distinction between rural and urban is hard to identify. Migration may be from one more or less urban area to another. Second, we are better able to observe the selectivity of migrant decisionmaking and to appreciate how this may have changed over time. While rural populations are generally poorer than urban ones, it had long been recognised that migration was usually undertaken by the less poor who could afford the cost of moving and take the risk of failure. Migration too also tended to occur among people of working age and with greater
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levels of skill. These migrants were often referred to as bridge-headers, who tended to locate in parts of cities associated with a sending region, or according to ethnicity, and were often predominantly male. But, as communication has improved in most parts of the world, making long distance travel easier and spreading information or misinformation about new opportunities, real or imagined to more people, and many more households have members in cities so migration is less of a risk and migration has become less selective. Not least, an increasing proportion of migrants during the twentieth century are women, either as part of family reconsolidation by joining male bridge-headers in the city or increasingly on their own. Third, while the economic emphasis offered by Lewis and Todaro seems misplaced against the occurrence of famine, war or violence in the countryside as an impulse to move, we now distinguish between different categories of migrant. Suggesting motives other than economic betterment, for example, some migrants are characterised as internally displaced or forced migrants who have little choice but to leave and may do so en masse at relatively short notice. In Colombia, for example, rural violence has displaced more than two million people, while in the Republic of Georgia ethnic conflicts in South Ossetia have produced an estimated 36,000 internally displaced persons and 120,000 forced migrants to Russia. According to recent UN data, a definition of individuals who have been forced to leave their place of permanent residence gives around 50 million (one out of every 280 people on earth), 30 million of whom have not crossed an international boundary and are termed internally displaced persons (IDPs) (see www.unhcr.org for updated data). Fourth, migration is increasingly perceived and understood as an international phenomenon. I stress the word perceived because mass international migration is not by itself new. Consider, for example, that the Immigration Centre at Ellis Island in New York harbour processed approximately 22 million migrants between 1894 and 1924, and that 100 million people in the US today can trace a relative entering the country from this one location. (By contrast the US was dealing with approximately 15,000 asylum applications per annum in the late 1990s.) We should also recognise that mass international migration at this time was in response to the political and social conflicts that accompanied the dissolution of States and the unmixing of nationalities. After 1917 1.5 million Russians fled their homeland following the Bolshevik Revolution, in 1923 an estimated 320,000 Armenian refugees fled to the Middle East and Europe as the Ottoman Empire collapsed and Turkish nationalism emerged in its wake, and approximately 190,000 Spanish refugees resettled permanently in France, Britain, Mexico and the Soviet Union due to civil war. The division of political territories resulted in the movement of 1.3 million Greeks to Greece and 400,000 Turks were moved from Greece to Turkey, while the partition of Palestine in 1948 to form the State of Israel required the movement of 500,000 people, and division of Bengal and Punjab to form India and (West) Pakistan forced the movement of almost 20 million people. What has happened since this earlier period of international mass migration is a sense of more complex patterns and motives. It is to this latter phenomenon that I want to focus on in more detail, introducing the concept of refugee regimes, diaspora, and considering the processes of integration and assimilation.

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International migration, refugee regime and diaspora

Following the Second World War, the reconstructed international community realised that a more robust legal regime was necessary to prevent or control the mass migration of people that were in need of (re) settlement and who were likely to be less predictable in their movement than in previous decades. Consequently, the United Nations established a High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and in 1951 adopted the UN Convention on Refugees. The latter defines refugees as people who are outside their own country owing to a well-founded fear of persecution, for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion (1951 UN Convention on Refugees amended by the 1967 Protocol). People who had been displaced but who had yet to cross an international boundary were referred to in the Convention as internally-displaced persons. Since the 1950s, the UNHCRs responsibilities have included broadly the protection of refugees, their resettlement in a recipient country and, as appropriate, repatriation back to their country of origin. The 1951 Geneva Convention obliges governments to render social and economic assistance in order to support the resettlement process, including possible provision of employment, housing, education, health and social security. It is accepted that the latter resources should be of a standard equal to those available to other members of the host community. The refugee regime, as it is sometimes referred to, became intertwined with the pressure of the Cold War. Migration was used as a means to undermine Communist states. A National Security Council Memo expressed support for the 1953 Refugee Act as a way to encourage defection of key personnel from USSR nations in order to inflict a psychological blow on communism. The notion of persecution at the heart of the Convention based on the deprivation of civil rights was interpreted as fleeing from Soviet-style Communist repression. For the most part, before 1950, refugee flows were characterised by their small numbers, often involving political elites fleeing from intolerant regimes who had the means to support themselves in the country of resettlement, and at best only ad hoc arrangements coped with the high numbers of refugees produced by social revolutions in China, Cuba and Korea. By the late 1950s, the UNHCR and national governments were focused on the resettlement of only between 12,000 and 15,000 refugees per annum, mostly arriving from Eastern Europe. It was not until the exodus of 200,000 political refugees from Hungary in 1956 that the international community had to deal with a mass migration and set about forming settlement programmes. Larger movements in Africa, where an estimated 400,000 refugees had left Angola and Rwanda by 1963 and almost 700,000 refugees had left the Sudan, the Congo and Portuguese Guinea by 1966, received less attention. The Cold War also provided the framework for assistance to other populations. The exodus of two million people from social revolutions in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, and over six million people from Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion in 1979, prompted permanent resettlement programmes in third-party countries. The majority of Afghan refugees moved to Pakistan and Iran, where approximately five million have since established permanent residence. Political ideology and opportunism rather than social need dictated the acceptance and provision of services to migrants into the 1980s. While El Salvadorians were denied asylum in the United States because they were fleeing a supposedly democratic regime which has received over US$2 billion in US military aid since 1980, or were given temporary protected status rather than full refugee rights,
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Nicaraguans were almost 10 times more likely to be granted asylum since they were escaping the totalitarianism of the Sandinistas. Similarly, Haitians were routinely denied refugee status and forcibly returned to Haiti, whereas Cubans were almost automatically granted asylum. Permission for permanent resettlement was gave preferential treatment to certain groups, often based on financial resources. With the end of the Cold War there was an optimism that the regional conflicts involving the US and USSR by proxy, in for example Afghanistan, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Mozambique, would be resolved and displaced populations could be repatriated. Unfortunately, many of the conflicts have had longer-lasting consequences while new conflicts have broken out, perpetuating and even deepening a refugee crisis (Koser and Lutz, 1998). The war in Kuwait, for example, resulted in the forced migration of about four million people most of whom originated in Bangladesh, India, East Africa and the Philippines, while renewed fighting between rebel and government forces in the Sudan, Liberia, Somalia and Rwanda displaced millions to neighbouring countries (Weiss and Collins, 1996). The disintegration of nation-states and their reconstitution through resurgent ethnic, religious and nationalist forces provoked fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh (an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan) and the related war between Armenia and Azerbaijan forced 1.6 million former Soviet citizens to flee by the mid-1990s. One of the largest forced migrations has been of ethnic Russians returning to Russia: in 1989, 25.5 million ethnic Russians were living in the 14 non-Russian republics of the USSR. About three million returned to Russia in the next five years, including 300,000 of an estimated 380,000 ethnic Russians from Tadzhikistan when the government adopted Tadzhik rather than Russian as the official language, provoking a tension that resulted in civil war between 1992 and 1993. Secessionist movements in Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Macedonia left 2.7 million homeless (60 per cent of whom were internally displaced), while ethnic cleansing in the Balkans led to the exodus of over two million ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. In 2005 the UNHCR estimated that there were at least 21.5 million refugees worldwide, of whom 19.2 million were classified as of concern. While refugee numbers have continued to remain high, greater attention and controversy has been focused on asylum seekers. The flow of asylum seekers across the world has attracted considerable controversy, especially to Europe and Australia, Canada and the United States. Look, for example, at Table 7.1 that shows data on the indicative refugee population in 2000 for nine countries. The approximately two million indicative refugees in these countries represent about nine per cent of the world refugee population. In some quarters these figures are interpreted as revealing how most refugees at the end of the twentieth century are located in, especially, sub-Saharan Africa compared to Europe which dominated in 1945. The geography of refugee migration has therefore shifted dramatically in 50 years. To others the table indicates that Europe, the US and Australia are taking too few refugees compared to the resources at their disposal to meet Convention guidelines. Lastly, of course, others point out why these countries that have no war or armed conflict on their borders are taking such large numbers of refugees. Indeed, such arguments consider it indicative that countries such as Eire, Greece, Portugal, or even Italy and Spain, receive so few applications. While this last view is partly motivated by political opportunism and by racism, there are some important shifts in the patterns of migrant flows and classification that need to be understood.
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Country

Indicative Refugee Population (end 2000) 57,658 82,458 121,457 71,016 129,722 906,000 146,002 57,653 507,290

Recognition Rate (Refugee & Humanitarian) (per cent) 24.7 17.3 48.6 42.6 19.4 12.4 12.7 34.4 21.4

Decision Rate (per cent) 104.1 31.7 84.1 90.0 Nd.1 89.7 175.0 34.4 21.4
1 Nd. = No data.

Australia Austria Canada Denmark France Germany Netherlands Switzerland US

Table 7.1: Comparative data on refugee recognition in select countries (Source: UNCHR (2001). Data for France from the Danish Refugee Council (2000)

Notes: Recognition Rate is defined as the number of refugee and other humanitarian decisions as a percentage of total decisions. Decision Rate is defined as the total number of decisions divided by the total number of applications per year expressed as a percentage. >100 therefore indicates a decreasing backlog of claims. First, consider the footnote to Table 7.1 which indicates refugee and other humanitarian decisions, the latter referring in part to a host of new classifications conferring fewer rights than Convention refugees. In particular this distinction refers to asylum seekers, who represent a growing proportion of all international migrants, afforded leave to remain. Second, while Table 7.1 captures a snapshot at one moment in time, other data show that the number of asylum seekers has fluctuated markedly in the past decade, declining from a peak in 1994 before rising again in 1998 and 1999 (Becker and Havinga, 1998). Some countries have recorded a pulse-effect of significant applicants arriving in short time. In 1999, for example, over 29,000 of the 46,000 applicants for asylum in Switzerland were from the Former Yugoslavia, with the next highest country of origin being Iraq with 1,658 applicants. Within two years applicants from the former Yugoslavia fell to a few thousand. Part of the fluctuation, in the case of applicants to Europe, is that the range of countries of origin has become broader and the pattern of flow less predictable (Becker and Havinga, 1998). Counter-intuitive flows destined for countries with which the claimants lack historical ties are increasingly important: thus people from Ecuador and Ivory Coast apply to the UK as well as the more obvious Spain or France (Jokisch and Pribilsky, 2002). Whether due to asylum shopping, where refugees in orbit move around looking for the best welfare deal and/or the slowest determination system, or the rights revolution that facilitates the spread of information on individual rights and entitlements, supported by lobby groups and NGOs, as critics of the open door policies maintain is difficult to ascertain. Third, asylum has been subject to more political manipulation by recipient country governments than has been the case for Convention refugees. Determination is seen as more political with a general toughening up stance (Mertenson and McCarthy, 1998), less reliant on facts and less
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independent of government. Many countries in Europe for example possess a so-called white list of perceived safe countries from where applicants are likely to be rejected despite international law requiring that the specific human rights situation pertaining to an individual be the criteria for decision-making (Mertenson and McCarthy 1998, p.312). The system, however, still displays highly subjective, and political, geographies of risk and safety. In 1996, Switzerland included Albania and India as safe whereas Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands did not; Denmark considered Niger to be safe whereas Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland did not; Germany removed Senegal from its safe list whereas most other governments in Europe did not. Safe designations have allowed some groups to enter fast track procedures, often based on longer-standing host relations. Thus, Germany has typically shown a preference for refugees of German descent and has made the integration process longer for all other migrant groups (although not based on refugee designation, numerous countries adopted fast procedures to attract Hong Kong Chinese with capital in the mid-1990s). The suspicion is that host governments are reluctant to award UN refugee status and offer automatic entitlements in preference for lower rights of protection and more temporary residence. Of course, despite the dramatic events that have shifted populations across regions and around the world more conventional economic migration has also been taking place. By 2000, the Hispanic population in the US numbered 35.3 million (Logan, 2002, p.1), with the majority coming from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. In 2000, approximately 19 per cent of all Mexicans, 16 per cent of all Salvadoreans, and 11 per cent of all Cubans and Dominicans were living in the United States. Elsewhere, with European Union enlargement large numbers of Polish, Hungarian and Czech migrants have entered France, Germany and the United Kingdom, competing for work with North African, Turkish and Bangladeshi migrants. In Southern Africa, Zimbabwean and Mozambique migrants seek out jobs in Johannesburg, while in Cape Town one can hear West Coast French spoken by car park attendants and street sellers. In Dubai and Bahrain construction workers are most likely from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India, and in Singapore maids and nannies are brought in from The Philippines. While some of these migrants arrive illegally, accumulating migratory cultural capital, defined as the knowledge of how to deal with traffickers, border officials and bureaucrats, how to develop and maintain contacts in receiving countries and how to find accommodation, realise social security entitlements and gain employment, others are part of formal labour supply chains. The growth of migration numbers and the more complex migration patterns have brought to the attention of more people the concept of Diaspora. Defined by Cohen (1999, p.iv) as a community demonstrated by an acceptance of an inescapable link with their past migration history and a sense of co-ethnicity with others of a similar background, Diaspora captures how people turn up in the most unexpected of places thanks to more diverse geographical and global networks. Diaspora has highlighted the changing relations of peoples movements to the power of the nationstate in the last 20 years. As Adelman (1999, p.90) has written:
The nation-state epitomised the contradictions of modernity. On the one hand, each nation-state consolidated itself around sentimental communal and sometimes atavistic sense of a homogenous nation. At the same time, the state was the vehicle of universal citizenship and, in idealist liberal belief, the 128

Chapter 7: Population movements upholder and defender of individual rights. The result was that people were pushed out of one territory because of the rise of one form of virulent homogenous ideology or another, resulting in persecution. The rational instruments of a modern state bureaucratic system rose up to prevent individuals entering the territory of a state of which they were not members. Those not tolerated by a nation-state had fewer and fewer free territories to which to flee, and, by the twentieth century, none at all as the whole globe became divided among nation-states in the first phase of physical globalisation. (Adelman 1999, p.90)

Nation-states therefore became gatekeepers determining who could become citizens. The contemporary refugee regime, as well as the formation of increasingly global labour markets for everything from chief executives, designers, nurses, teachers and university faculty, and international protocols diminishing state sovereignty have threatened the notion of the nation-state as arbiter of who enters a national territory and who is barred. Nation-states, rather than serve refugees needs have sought to reclaim their sovereignty under the guise of immigration control. According to Sassen, a relatively small number of immigrants have taken over the public imaginary as actually being economic migrants who used the asylum option because it made entry easier given closure of immigration (Sassen, 1999, p.124). As Koser and Black (1999, p.4) have written: Most asylum seekers now fail to obtain formal refugee status because they are not seen as meeting the criteria for refugee definition laid down by the 1951 Geneva Convention. More accurate perhaps, while the slander is that bogus refugees and asylum seekers are economic migrants in disguise, the added slur is that they are actually uneconomic migrants. In the US, a popular nativist discourse has represented the border with Mexico as a small picket fence holding back a flood of semi-criminals (The Economist, 11.3.2000). Once arrived, the concern is that migrants (especially Hispanics) are diluting American culture. Referring to, for example, data that show that California in 1980 had 150 schools with students speaking more than 10 languages but not English, a figure that had risen to 800 by 1999, politicians such as presidential hopeful Senator Pat Buchanan ask:
America must ask the question of itself; do they have the right to shape the country that future generations will live in or will this be decided by peoples who decide to move into the country?

Lobby groups such as The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) go further urging tougher immigration controls as limited resources are being exhausted, jobs are being taken, wages are being depressed, schools are being overcrowded, highways are being congested, crime is increasing, contagious diseases are being reintroduced, the environment is being damaged and the welfare system is being overrun (from website). Anti-immigration agendas have formed a central platform for political debate in Australia, the UK, Denmark, France, Germany, Austria and elsewhere, with the US in the past decade having taken the notion of fortress beyond metaphor as a means to reassert the nationstate. Denial of Welfare: Proposition 187 (California) denies social welfare to illegal migrants; Proposition 227 (California) adopts one year bilingual education, then English only; 1996 IIRIRA Bill removes the right of illegal immigrants and (US-born) children to public-funded programmes including family aid, Medicaid, food stamps.
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Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act gives the Immigration and Naturalisation Service power of immediate deportation to entrant without documentation, and removes the right to judicial review. Militarisation of border: Operation Hold-the-Line (El Paso 93); Operation Gatekeeper (California); Operation Safeguard (Arizona); Operation Rio Grande (Texas) using peace dividend military technology. Increased apprehensions, over 1.5 million by 1998 and deaths in crossing (1,450 Mexicans 19952000). Despite the virtually free movement of capital and a rhetoric in many quarters of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism, in the age of globalisation no country seems willing to welcome mass migration and many states have officially sought to prevent the settlement of unskilled, elderly or dependent migrants (Cohen, 1999, p.163).

The changing policy response

International migration flows from more and different sending communities, and movements to less predictable reception regions have challenged the established responses advocated by international agencies and carried out by host governments. The standard response has been from relief for people fleeing political persecution in temporary safe havens such as refugee camps in the country of first asylum, resettlement for those fleeing certain political conditions and unlikely to return, and voluntary repatriation once conditions are deemed suitable in order to assume the rights and obligations of the resident population. Major shortcomings have been identified with these approaches. First, many refugees are destined to remain indefinitely in camps or legal limbo in the first country of asylum rather than experience social and economic integration. Indeed, for Rwandan refugees in camps in Tanzania and Burundi, community structures that provided some semblance of protection were undermined, services were insufficient to meet basic needs resulting in epidemics, the use of sexual favours to access food was widespread, and militias confiscated aid and sought out recruits. Rather than being beacons of humanitarian intervention, safe havens became among the unsafe places in the world. Second, the international community emphasis on the right to exile, effectively a condition of separation and alienation, ignored the right to live in safety and security in the country and community of origin. The exile-orientated approach has placed responsibility for solving the refugee problem on the asylum countries rather than on the sending nation. Receiving governments have often furthered the exile ethos by linking resettlement with dispersal: as adopted by the UK government to resettle 20,000 Hungarians in 1956; 3,000 Chileans in the 1970s and over 20,000 Vietnamese since 1979. Dispersal does allow for the burden of resettlement costs to be spread between different regions and is also thought to assist with integration into the host society by avoiding the creation of migrant enclaves. Evidence has revealed, however, that dispersal programmes may increase the cost of refugee resettlement since economies of scale dictate that it is more expensive to provide specialised services such as language courses and employment retraining to people in isolation. The denial of an identifiable community of migrants also creates problems of emotional support and cultural adjustment that enhance disadvantages in accessing public resources resulting in occupancy of the worst housing and employment areas. Nor does dispersal prevent enclave formation, but rather encourages a second wave of moves that, for
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example, meant a trebling of the Vietnamese population in London within months of arrival. Third, faced with long-staying communities of refugees and asylum seekers governments have been tempted to shift from voluntary to mandatory repatriations. Although refoulement as it is termed is strongly disapproved of by the UNHCR, except on grounds of national security or public order, it is a common approach to the treatment of asylum seekers. Little concern is expressed as to what repatriation or going home actually means: does it refer to an individuals country of origin or specifically to the house that was abandoned upon flight? Yet, while return and resettlement are regarded as highly desirable in some policy circles, few governments or international agencies dedicate sufficient resources to facilitate the political and socio-economic reintegration of returnees. In fact, despite substantial refugee flows in the 1970s and 1980s, only Zimbabwe (in 1980) was able to repatriate nearly all who had left. Generally, repatriation programmes fail to guarantee basic protection, utilise effective resettlement machinery or deploy sufficient aid to create jobs and provide welfare services, making it likely that returnees quickly become susceptible to a new life as internally displaced.

Integration and assimilation

As is mostly the case for migrants generally, who usually arrive in cities, regions or countries that lack proactive policies of reception, few governments seem prepared to recognise the benefits of accommodating or resettling refugees. This is despite evidence that many bring new skills, add to the cultural diversity and the intellectual vitality of a country, provide a pool of cheap labour to increase production and the provision of services and boost flagging sectors of the economy such as construction. Indeed, the perception of most governments (and electorates) is that migrants, but especially refugees and asylum seekers, are a burden on the social and economic infrastructure of the host society. The perception is of an unwelcome competitor for land, housing and jobs, that tend to soak up welfare beyond what they contribute, are usually at the bottom of the socio-economic scale, and generate social tension. As voters express socalled compassion fatigue governments ask why they should be forced to shoulder the refugee burden when they are not to blame for the human rights abuses that caused the flows in the first place. Governments in the US, Canada, Australia and across Europe at least are accused of toughening up their stance and resource allocations to refugees and asylum seekers, and in some cases to migrants more generally. The tougher stance, however, obscures an uncomfortable question. To what extent might lowering the rights of migrants, and the resources dedicated to them, create a self-fulfilling prophecy? As migrants receive fewer resources or face more barriers to those available, will they integrate less and become less socially mobile? Let us consider then the definition of integration and assimilation, and the evidence that these processes take place and confer benefits. Migration, be it voluntary or forced, involves the rebuilding of livelihoods and identities which are reformed in the process of movement and affected by the experience of reception in a new environment. The general assumption in policy circles is that integration is positive and corresponds, in the words of UNHCR, to the process by which the refugee is assimilated into the social and economic life of a new national community. For refugee we can also read asylum seeker and migrant, but we should note that the
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UNHCR definition equates integration with assimilation or it is closely and positively linked. Among academics, however, distinctions are usually drawn, and indeed stressed. According to Valtonen (1998, p.41) while assimilation involves the complete merging of migrants into the host society in a unidirectional process of absorption, integration still implies the right to retain ethnic identity, and the distinctive institutions, organisations and cultural practices of the sending society. Valtonen argues that integration is the incorporation of migrants into the receiving society, whereby they engage with, and become part of their resettlement society[via] full and unimpeded participation in society and the access or openness of institutions to all members of society (1998, p.41). Here, however, engagement means co-existence and not the requirement or expectation that the migrant becomes like the host. To follow Kuhlman (1991) integration is achieved when: Migrants are participating in the host economy in ways commensurate with their skills and compatible with their cultural values. Migrants achieve a standard of living that satisfies culturally determined minimum requirements (including access to housing, health services and education). Migrants experience socio-cultural change that permits them to maintain their identity and adjust psychologically to a new situation. The standards of living and economic opportunities for members of the host society have not deteriorated due to the influx of migrants. Friction between host population and migrants is not worse than within the host population itself. There is no more discrimination than between groups previously settled within the host society. By these criteria most migrant groups (including refugees and asylum seekers), take active steps to become integrated. Whether they are successful or not depends on wider structural factors. In terms of employment, for example, a high priority for migrants in order to raise income and assist with building self-esteem, around 60 per cent of people from Southeast Asia entering the United States are in receipt of welfare benefits, and most studies show refugees in particular undertaking economically-marginal activities with low wages despite long hours, extensive periods of unemployment, and de-skilling and lower status even compared to other immigrant groups. Nevertheless, there are some examples of success. As Rutledge (1992, pp.8283) has noted:
In 1980, a study under the auspices of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy showed that immigrants into the US earned as much or more than the average American family within 10 years of entry into the country. In addition, the survey found that immigrant families paid into the treasury more in taxes than they used in welfare and social services. Within just a few years following their admission, most refugee families are self-sufficient and contributors to American economic growth.

Similarly, Fass (1986) found that Hmong refugees (a hill tribe from Laos) who resettled in the United States with high levels of illiteracy in their own language, little occupation experience beyond farming and almost no knowledge of Western culture became involved in the establishment of individual and collective enterprises, such as sewing and farming projects. Portes and Borocz (1989) have commented on the examples of self132

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employment witnessed amongst Cubans and Dominicans, while Gregory Rodriguez of the New America Foundation argues that the success of Mexicans needs to account for the arrival every day of more, and poorer, migrants. Focussing on household rather than head-of-house income, controlling for foreign (Mexico) compared to US-born Mexicans, Rodriguez found that over 50 per cent of US-born Latinos qualified as middle class (more than the usually hailed Asian groups) and 30 per cent of foreignborn Latinos also qualified. Access to housing is often identified as critical to integration and an especially acute problem during the early years of resettlement. In particular, a lower percentage of refugees own their own homes compared to other groups: in Israel over 75 per cent of immigrants arriving from the former Soviet Union live in rented accommodation often with several families occupying a single dwelling. Migrants also spend a greater percentage of their income on housing and live in significantly more crowded conditions. While these difficulties are not necessarily different from other socio-economically disadvantaged groups, they are exacerbated by the lack of history of residence in a country. Not surprisingly, research has indicated that because refugees often comprise low-income households, they are frequently concentrated in the poorest sector of the housing market and are often quite segregated from other ethnic communities. Finally, integration is measured and determined by proficiency in the host language. Dukes (1996) study of non-quota refugees resettling in the United Kingdom revealed that of those who had obtained employment, the majority had been in the country longer, spoke good English when they arrived and were living in London or the South East (where there were greater job opportunities). Likewise, Haines (1987) has claimed that the employment of Southeast Asian refugees in the United States was predominantly determined by the ability to communicate in English, while many refugees without the host language were forced to accept a job that required little communication and mostly manual skills, which once started the refugees found difficult to leave. Visit any restaurant of any quality in New York, Dallas or Los Angeles, and regardless of the ethnic cuisine offered on the sign outside, the kitchen is likely to be populated by Mexicans substitute different groups of origin and much the same applies to London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai and Sydney. Parallel to the literature which highlights the difficulties experienced by refugees in accessing employment and housing are studies which explore the determinants of their marginal status in society. These determinants tend to be categorised in two main groups: pre-migratory characteristics and situational determinants in the receiving society. In terms of the pre-migration characteristics, two factors stand out. First, the migrants socio-demographic condition in the country of origin, which ranges from economic, social, political characteristics to include variables such as household composition, sex, age, race, ethnicity, health and mental status. Second, the specific causes of the individuals departure. Of course, even less than economic migrants escaping poverty, refugees do not self-select themselves for migration and have little time to prepare for it. Refugees forced to leave El Salvador in a hurry, for example, were forced to go underground since the very act of flight put them in danger, a situation that impeded their subsequent integration. Whether migrants are able to proactively consider all relevant information and anticipate danger, or whether they are reactive and move in a state of panic with little alternative but to escape from violence or threats is likely to influence integration.
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Situational determinants in the host society focus on how labour markets, institutional and employer discrimination, the media response to newcomers and the ambiguity of legal status have differential impacts on the resettlement experience. The willingness of refugees to accept membership of the host society is predetermined by the attitude of the host society towards them. As Weiner (1996, p.53) has commented:
The willingness to change ones identity, or at least add a second identity perhaps one of the most painful psychological experiences humans can encounter but also one of the most liberating is shaped first and foremost by the willingness of the host culture to accept the immigrant into the community. As long as the host culture regards immigrants as permanent aliens and denies citizenship, then migrants will cling to their existing identities.

It is also noted that migrants must be willing to accept the norms and customs of the host society a process called acculturation. The extent to which exile is perceived as a temporary solution will affect the strategies adopted by those displaced. On the one hand, if refugees accept that they are unable to return to home they are more likely to grasp opportunities, as was the case for Jews from Eastern Europe, Armenians from Russia and Turkey, Indians from Uganda, Hindus from Pakistan and Muslims from India. On the other hand, if migrants anticipate going home and see the host society as a temporary place of residence then they are less likely to undertake the process of redefining their identity. Some migrants may deliberately alienate themselves from the host society in order to maintain cultural norms and social networks for business purposes. Indeed, in contrast to minimum-wage jobs offered by government programmes the ethnic migrant communities may offer more rapid roads to self-sufficiency. While the downside is the risk that economic success is achieved through the superexploitation of workers, customers and family members, ethnic communities provide the owners of businesses with investment funds, patronage, low-cost labour, loyalty and prestige. But research suggests that in any case the relation between self- and forced exclusion, permanency and temporary desires to stay, and acculturation and integration may not be direct. While some El Salvadorean refugees in Canada planned to return home, many were determined to make the most of their situation leading to higher prevalence of education take-up, hoping to learn skills relevant to the eventual rebuilding of El Salvador. What is not clear from studies is whether, as globalisation produces more diverse and less predictable flows of people around the world, it becomes more difficult for these people to integrate. The late modern world is characterised by two broad contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, globalisation has produced homogenisation, while on the other hand there has been a reassertion of localism most notably in the form of ethnicity, nationalism and religious fundamentalism. Migrants are associated with globalisation but are from a homogenising force in contemporary society, invoking the sense of Diaspora or cosmopolitanism, bringing their own sense of localism to distant locations but also provoking a localism among hosts. How in these circumstances can migrants integrate their domestic cultures are affected by globalisation as are those they seek to integrate into?

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Activity 7.1 Provide an audit of your countrys record on international migration. Is your country a net receiver or contributor to international migration? From where do the principal migrants groups come from and where do they go to? What are the official migration policies for your country and how have these changed in the last decade? How have recent migrant arrivals performed, economically and socially, compared to older migrant groups? What are the advantages or disadvantages faced by recent migrants compared to older cohorts? Do you think there are differences of performance between official migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, if these groups exist?

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: describe what factors influence the decision to migrate differentiate between refugee, forced migrant and asylum seeker, in a wider context discuss the complexity of the concept of integration.

Sample examination question

In 1998, the UK government White Paper on Immigration and Asylum was entitled Fairer, Faster, Firmer. To what extent does Fairer, Faster, Firmer accurately reflect all countries attitudes to immigration and asylum over the past decade, and what are the consequences for migrant groups? Use examples to illustrate your answer.

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Notes

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Section 4: The geography of cities

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Notes

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Chapter 8: The geography of cities

Chapter 8: The geography of cities

Essential reading
Knox, P . and S. Marston (eds) Human Geography: Places and Regions in Global Context. (Longman, 2009). Law, L. Sensing the City: Urban Experiences, in Cloke, P . et al.(eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). May, J. Exclusion, in Cloke, P . et al. Introducing Human Geographies. (Hodder Arnold, 2005). Ogborn, M. Modernity and modernisation, in Cloke, P . et al. Introducing Human Geographies. (Hodder Arnold, 2005).

Further reading
Angotti, T. Metropolis 2000: Planning, Poverty and Politics. (London: Routledge, 1993). Blakely, E. and M. Snyder Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States. (Washington, D.C.; Cambridge, Mass.: Brookings Institute, c.1999). Curtis White, K.J and A.M. Guest Community Lost or Transformed? Urbanisation and Social Ties, City and Community, 2(3) 2003, pp.23959. Davis, M. The City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. (London: Verso, 1990). Dear, M. and S. Flusty Postmodern Urbanism, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 88(1) 1998, pp.5072. Garreau, J. Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. (New York: Anchor Books, 1992). Graham, S. and S. Marvin Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. (London: Routledge, 2001). Guterson, D. No Place like Home: On the Manicured Streets of a Master-Planned Community, Harpers Magazine, November 1992, pp.5564. Harvey, D. Spaces of Hope. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000). Holston, J. The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989). Ibelings, H. Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalisation. (Netherlands Architecture Institute, 1998). Jackson, K.T. The Crab Grass Frontier: The Suburbanisation of the United States. (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). Jacobs, J. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. (New York: Random House, 2002). Lloyd, M.G., J. McCarthy, S. McGreal and J. Berry Business Improvement Districts, Planning and Urban Regeneration, International Planning Studies, 8(4) 2003, pp.295321. Mitchell, D. The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. (Guilford Press, 2003). Putnam, R. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. (New York; London: Simon and Schuster, 2001). Sambale, J. Nonprofits in Los Angeles: between peace-keeping and employment, in Eick, V ., M. Mayer and J. Sambale (eds) From Welfare to Work: Nonprofits and the Workfare State in Berlin and Los Angeles. (Free University of Berlin, 2005) pp.8186. http://workfare-city.lai.fu-berlin.de/ fileadmin/workfare-city/PDF/2003_WP1.pdf Scott, J. Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. (New Haven; London: Yale, 1998) especially Chapter 4. Smith, N. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. (London: Routledge, 1996). 139

09 Human geography Smith, N. New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy, Antipode, 34(3) 2002, pp.42750. Soja, E. Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). Soja, E. Writing the City Spatially, City, 7(3) 2003, pp.26980. Sorkin, M. (ed.) Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992). Stanback Jr, T.M. The New Suburbanisation: Challenge to the Central City. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991). Wacquant, L. Urban Marginality in the Coming Millennium, Urban Studies, 36(10) 1999, pp.163947. Whyte, W.H. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. (New York: Project for Public Spaces, 2001, c.1980). Zukin, S. The Culture of Cities. (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995).

Aims of the chapter

This chapter provides a survey of leading-edge themes in the study of cities. We begin with a brief look at how cities were perceived during the nineteenth century, largely as negative social outcomes of capitalism, into a period in which utopian and eventually stylistic modernism took hold. The chapter then traces the rise of the suburbs, gentrification, concerns about the fragmentation of the city and the loss of public space. We consider the contribution of post-modern and high-modern architecture, and the role of cities to geopolitics.

Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: discuss the principal currents of thought in the study of cities discuss the combination of urban spatial and architectural form.

Anti-urbanism and utopianism

The twentieth century has been the century of urbanisation in a whole series of ways (Harvey, 2000, p.7). Not only do cities contain many more people than a century ago, and accommodate over half, and as much as 90 per cent, of the population of some developed countries, but by the early twenty-first century with urban growth in the developing world, they will contain over half of all people. More interesting, perhaps, is the sense that daily life is dictated by what happens in cities and thus to an increasing degree we are all urbanists (Soja, 2003, p.269). This is a profound turnaround from the image problem experienced by cities over the first two millennia. Plato believed that the ideal city consisted of no more than 5,040 people, the number of inhabitants who could reasonably be expected to recognise each other from frequent meeting, and therefore form a citizenry. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw city as antithetic to the ideal society:
It is the large towns that drain the state and create its weakness. The wealth they create is apparent and illusory. It is said that the town of Paris is worth a province to the king of France: I believe it costs him several of themFrance would be much more powerful if Paris were annihilated. (Rousseau, 1762)

while William Morris was as damning about London:

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Chapter 8: The geography of cities London, and other great commercial cities of Britain are mere masses of sordidness, filth and squalor, embroiled with patches of pompous and vulgar hideousness. (William Morris 1880s cited in Ashworth 1954, p.171)

To some extent these writers had good cause to be unenthusiastic about urbanism. By the nineteenth century at least cities were displaying the dark side of progress rapid industrialisation had produced pollution and more dense living conditions. Vices such as prostitution, abandonment of children, public drinking, non-church attendance, begging, pathologies including drug-use, being prone to violence and criminality, as well as an apparent lack of care to health, manners and literacy all drew the attention of reformers such as Charles Booth and Octavia Hill, and radicals such as Frederich Engels. Henry Mayhew offered the following description from his London Labour and the London Poor: a cyclopdia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work (1861):
The poor wretch without hands, who crouches on the pavement and writes with the stumps of his arms; the crab-like man without legs, who sits strapped to a board, and walks upon his hands; the legless man who propels himself in a little carriage constructed on the velocipede principle I cannot think that the police exercise a wise discretion in permitting some of the more hideous of these beggars to infest the streets. Instances are on record of nervous females having been seriously frightened, and even injured, by seeing me without legs or arms crawling at their feet.

In a single location and apparently semi-permanent in character, cities raised the spectre that instead of going forward society was going backward and downward. Of particular note was the observation that cities provoked problems of sanitation. Although in the case of water, a direct link was not established until 1854 when Dr John Snow traced the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London, to a communal pump. Rather, cities in general and the poorer parts in particular have been widely perceived as dirty, while the inhabitants have been blamed for the condition. Cities became regarded as dystopian spaces. Key thinkers of the late nineteenth century expressed their concern in different ways. Sigmund Freud, for example, offered the diagnosis of agoraphobia as a condition

Figure 8.1: Howards garden city (Source: Ebenezer Howard Garden Cities of To-Morrow (London, 1902. Reprinted, edited with a Preface by F.J. Osborn and an Introductory Essay by Lewis Mumford. (London: Faber and Faber, [1946]). 141

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of fear from being in open space. Camilo Sitte expressed nostalgia for the lost public space as he reflected on the destruction of squares and parks in Vienna and Ebenezer Howard lamented that cities denied people community and an ability to interact with each other in daily life. Howards book Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902) inspired a movement among civil society that was picked up by developers and governments to create garden cities. Howard provided a model of a multi-nucleated city around green spaces and proximate communal services, and though his ideas for civil congregation, walking and reading groups were mostly dropped his influence can be seen in Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City, around London, Forest Hills, Sunnyside Gardens and Flushing Meadow in New York, and Radburn in New Jersey. Howards idea of balance between worklife and townnature can be appreciated from Figure 8.1. Cities rarely received a positive, or even empirical, treatment until the Chicago School of Sociology.

The Chicago School: morphology and urban systems

The Chicago School consisted of a wide range of researchers, the best known to geographers being Ernest Burgess, Robert Park and Louis Wirth, interested in applying a scientific approach to determine how human behaviour is influenced by social and urban structure. Their principal laboratory was the city of Chicago which had grown from almost nothing in 1860 to over two million inhabitants by 1910. This seemed the perfect locale to detect how urbanisation contributed to social problems. The Chicago School is also often described as the Ecological School for the belief that nature provided the general principles to the study of urbanism. The School proposed that the city functioned rather like an urbanism, although rather than dying they were intrigued that communities continued in changed, adapted form over time. In his classic text Urbanism as a Way of Life (1938) Wirth investigated how mobility in the city related to a sense of alienation (or anomie), the lack of contact across cultures, and how the city as a meeting point for diverse lifestyles tended to contribute to further diversification. At one point Wirth says that the city has:
brought together people from the ends of the earth because they are different and thus useful to one another, rather than because they are homogeneous and like-minded. (1938, p.10)

Nevertheless, within the city this heterogeneity had a price. First, it encouraged people to cluster together, with race as well as class a key determinant. Burgess and Park showed that Chicago was ordered with a series of rings from the CBD, a zone of transition consisting essentially of slum housing, working-class districts and an outer commuter zone of single family dwellings. The classic map of Chicago is reproduced as Figure 8.2. Although, as Neil Smith put it:
As a Scottish undergraduate from a small town in the mid-1970s, I was plied with urban land use models in which half of the ideal city seemed to be submerged under Lake Michigan. Naturally, I was sceptical. Upon coming to the United States my scepticism proved well founded, for in no city I visited did I find the eastern sector submerged, and in no other city either did Parks or Burgesss concentric rings apply to the western sector occupied by land lubbers. (Smith, 1992, p.110)

While normative, Park, Burgess, Sutherland, Znaniecki and others closely mapped a staggering array of data on social and ethnic composition,
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The Concentric Zone Model 1. Central Business District 2. Transitional Zone
** Recent Immigrant Groups

Deteriorated Housing Factories Abandoned Buildings 3. Working Class Zone Single Family Tenements 4. Residential Zone Single Family Homes Yards/Garages 5. Commuter Zone Suburbs

Figure 8.2: Chicago city zones (after Park, R.E., E.W. Burgess and R.D. McKenzie The City, Chicago University Press)

mobility and crime to build up their maps. The School was especially interested in the Black American population, noting a process of competitive succession as Blacks moved in and Whites out, changes to social institutions such as dance halls and print media, and to city politics, zoning and land values. Second, heterogeneity contributed to the ways in which urbanisation brought social breakdown. A series of Chicago School studies showed how social institutions in the city, from the family, church, political parties to business organisations failed to instil cooperation and solve problems. The results were crime, further alienation, family disruption and links into other organisations, notably in the case of Frederick Thrashers case to the street corner gang. School members advocated the building up of organisations such as sports leagues and recreation programmes, and were disdainful of the tougher approaches that often appealed to the white flight voters conducted by the police and detention services. While the Chicago School is now treated with suspicion and is usually a point of reference to a critique of environmental or social determinism, nevertheless by introducing empiricism to urban study the School shifted away from labelling areas and people on a purely representational basis. Moreover, in adopting a more neutral stance to the problems of the city, most School members introduced hopeful readings of social conditions. In the case of slums, for example, in addition to demonstrating the incidence of pathologies, they showed the alternate face of entrepreneurial vigour and attempts to counter social disorganisation. Thrashers work on gangs, Andersons studies of The Hobo, Gosnell on Machine Politics and Wirths The Ghetto remain widely read.

Modernism and planning

Modernism is associated with a new confidence in the design of urban space, a confidence born from the abstract informed by science and industry rather than the influences of nature. Cities move from being a projection of social malaise to the stage of new civilisation. Gone is the gradualist impulse and in is the ambition of grand design. Architects became the New Gods. Writing about his ideas for the new city of Chandigarh, commissioned by Prime Minister Nehru as a city built to be unfettered by traditions of the past, the Swiss architect Le Corbusier noted:
It was a matter of occupying a plainthe geographical event was, in truth, a sculpture of the intellectthe battle of space fought in the mind. 143

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Of an earlier experience of designing a new Algiers he had said:

I drew up plans after analyses, after calculations, with imagination, with poetry. The plans were prodigiously true. They were incontrovertible. They were breathtaking. They expressed all the splendour of modern times.

Whereas the new garden cities and suburbs had offered a restrained vision of utopia, or as Paul Rabinow remarked there was too much emphasis on the garden and not enough on the city, modernism was audacious and distinctly urban. High modernism was to be based on a specific set of norms outlined as scientific in order to create new forms of sociality. These norms were laid down in The Charter of Athens, a list of 111 theses written on a boat between Marseilles, Venice and Athens by members of the Congrs Internationaux dArchitecture Moderne (CIAM), but principally by Le Corbusier (Box 8.1). CIAMs aims were overtly political, having in 1928 published a Manifesto as an attempt to influence The League of Nations to set up international standards for the planning and teaching of urbanism. At this stage, CIAM argued that the ideal city consisted of three million people, arguing for a functionalist use of space. In the words of Le Corbusier, the aim was to create the house-machine:
Industry on the grand scale must occupy itself with building and establish the elements of the house on a mass production basis. We must create the mass production spirit. The spirit of constructing mass production houses. The spirit of living in mass production houses. The spirit of conceiving mass production houses. We shall arrive at the house-machine, the mass production house, healthy (and morally so too) and beautiful in the same way that the working tools and instruments which accompany our existence are beautiful.

Starting from a tabula rasa, this ethos was universal, making no concessions to place, with ideas transferable from Algiers to Rio de Janeiro, or Moscow to Paris, and no concessions to time, with instant cities and projects divorced from the organic growth of the historical city (Scott, 1998). The zenith was the new capital city (see Table 8.1). Socially, modernism espoused an egalitarian view of space, again through the newness of design and use of materials, through the creation of public areas rather than privileged quarters. For Le Corbusier the city would be literally transparent, spaces were treeless and buildings would be translucent prisms that seem to float in the air. In the construction of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, for example, Lucio Costa aimed to transform society through large superblocks that would:
prevent [the] hateful differentiation of social classesall the families share the same lifeBecauseof the inexistence of social class discrimination, the residents of the superquadra are forced as if into the sphere of a big familyThus raised [their children] will construct the Brazil of tomorrow, since Brasilia is the glorious cradle of a new civilisation. (Cited in Holston.)

Nevertheless, the blocks had maids rooms and cities were efficiently zoned for industry, commerce, administration, leisurewith little mixed use:

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Year 1956 1957 1959 1961 1963 1965 1970 1973 1975 1983 1987 1995 1997

Country Brazil Mauritania Pakistan Botswana Libya Malawi Belize Tanzania Nigeria Ivory Coast Argentina Malaysia Kazakhstan

City Brasilia Nouakchott Islamabad Gaberone Bedia Lilongwe Belmopan Dodoma Abuja Yamoussoukro Viedma* Putrajaya Akmola

Former Capital Rio de Janeiro Saint Louis (Senegal) Karachi Mafeking (RSA) Tripoli & Benghazi Zomba Belize City Dar es Salaam Lagos Abidjan Buenos Aires Kuala Lumpur Almaty
*Proposal approved 1987 but was never carried out.

Table 8.1: New capital cities Box 8.1: The Charter of Athens Well-ventilated residence near green space. Separation of residence from workplace, with industry outside city proper. Exclusive cultural sectors near residence. Separation of transport from pedestrian. A difficulty with modernism, therefore, is the tension between functionalism and everyday life. In the modernist sound-bite form follows function but few architects or planners appeared to consider whether the city works. In the original Master Plan for Brasilia, for example, Oscar Niemeyer proposed underpasses rather than pedestrian crossings. People, however, crossed the streets forming with time unofficial crossing areas. Some underpasses were closed off as frightening. In 1985, when Niemeyer was invited back to revise the city he urged the removal of the pedestrian crossings as suicide and the reinstatement of the underpasses. Similarly, in the glass-walled buildings people began to put up screens so as not to be overlooked by neighbours in blocks opposite. Even so the acoustic qualities of glass and concrete made noise transfer a problem, inhibiting some and provoking others to use music and television as a sound barrier. For readings of the vernacular uses and representations of modernism see Holston (1989). Finally, as the leading critic of modernism, Jane Jacobs, was to observe, Designing a dream city is easy, rebuilding a living one takes imagination (2002). Modernisms confidence and its motivation for social engineering through design, however, tended towards autocracy with no input for people or accommodation of the peculiarities of place (Scott, 1998). In New York, for example, the Parks Commissioner Robert Moses embarked on an ambitious building plan using compulsory acquisition powers that overruled local objections. Urged on by modernist designers such as Norman Bel Geddes, the results included New York Coliseum, Cooper Square, Lincoln Center, the UN, Stuyvesant Town, Fordham University, parts of New York University, Mount Sinai Hospital, Morningside Gardens, enormous housing projects but above all the system of expressways that
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displaced about 250,000 New Yorkers. Unrepentant, Moses is quoted as saying:

When you operate in an overbuilt metropolis you have to hack your way with a meat axe; Im just going to keep right on building, you do the best you can to stop it.

One unbuilt scheme, which finally did fall to opposition from the patrician Manhattan families and community groups, was the Lower Manhattan Expressway. A 2.4-mile, eight-lane expressway was first proposed in 1927, endorsed by the City Planning Commission in 1941 and approved by the Board of Estimate in 1960. The expressway was to link the Holland Tunnel on the West Side and the Williamsburgh and Manhattan Bridges on the East Side. According to the plan, the expressway arteries were to weave through neighbourhoods, turning New York, according to one critic, into an East Coast version of Los Angeles.

From suburbs to postmodern city of bits

Moses is often credited or blamed for accelerating the suburbanisation of New York, especially in the direction of Long Island. In fact suburbanisation is not a new phenomenon. Cities across Europe and the US were developing suburbs by the mid-nineteenth century as new transport lines spread out from the city. Between 1919 and 1939 the population of Greater London increased from six to eight million people but the citys spatial extent increased fivefold as the central city population fell by 400,000. It is to the period from the 1930s and especially the 1950s, however, that the suburbs become emblematic of urban growth. The suburb marks a new relationship across urban space, a rupture of the relationship between the city and the countryside, to one in which the city is marked by an uneasy symbiosis between city-proper and suburb (Stanback, 1991). In one sense the suburb was allusion to the need to green the city, a rus in urbe, and to protect the countryside from damaging urban growth. The lower densities stressed the need for green spaces and protective belts where development would be prohibited. In another sense, however, the lower densities consumed more land than the industrial city, and the reliance on roads and the ideology of mass consumption consumed ever more space to new urban centres, malls and business parks. The new watchword was sprawl (Angotti, 1993). By the late 1960s it was evident that the suburbs were not simply extensions of the city but were combining to create new urban forms. Toynbee (1970) regarded this process as dynamic, shifting the megalopolis to become an Ecumenopolis, but within which he warned the suburbs represented a sly collective selfishness of a privileged minority that sought autonomy and tax breaks from the larger city (1970, p.222). Attention in particular focussed on the conformity of the suburbs, the manicured lawns and picket fences, and a particularly gendered representation of the man cleaning the family car and the wife acquiring consumer goods to aid with the domestic labour. Derision runs through books such as Jacksons academic treatment in The Crab-Grass Frontier (1985) as well as a host of popular burb movies in which the excitement born of difference has to come from without (ET, Edward Scissorhands) or the sinister within, captured in Bryan Forbess Stepford Wives (1975). The movie tracks the movement of Walter and Joanna from New York to the Connecticut town of Stepford, where Walter buys into the idyll bonding via the Mens Association while Joanna is disturbed by the other wives single-minded devotion to pleasing their husbands, keeping a perfect house and baking the perfect cake.
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Yet, other scholars have been more sympathetic, especially the idea that the smart growth of the edge city can be both economically and environmentally efficient, and even restrict sprawl (Garreau, 1992). A tension, however, was seen to exist between the edge city as autonomous, creating a fragmentation of the city, and the apparent homogeneity of the architecture. To consider the first point, as even Garreau (1992) admitted edge cities depended upon the formation of shadow government, usually business-dominated organisations with the ability to tax, legislate for, and police their areas, but which are rarely accountable to voters (Davis, 1990). Excellent examples are to be found in Daviss discussion of City of Industry, Los Angeles and Sojas account of Exopolis in southern California (Soja, 2000). The magnitude of this fragmentation is highlighted by the fact that an average US metropolis has over 300 local governments (Angotti, 1993, p.183). This political fragmentation is reflected in, indeed it allows, the segregation of these spaces by the use of highways, design and security apparatus. Infrastructure networks become simultaneously unbounded from the city and rebounded through networks and enclosed built spaces supporting each other (Graham and Marvin, 2001). The second point is that edge cities tend towards homogeneity. Whether in Los Angeles, Dallas, Johannesburg, Mexico City or Bangkok, the configuration of megaproject business parks, entertainment complexes, malls and generally upscale residential areas look and feel alike. In itself this is hardly surprising as a formula has been adopted; note the comments in Box 8.2 made by Victor Gruen, the guru of mall construction in 1963. But even as cities have become more diverse and multicultural since the 1960s, the design and architecture seem familiar. Few of these edge cities can claim an iconic building. According to Ibelings (1998), rather than homogeneity it is neutrality that best reflects the architecture of these spaces. When the purpose of megaprojects is to produce profit for the benefit of non-place-specific capital controlled by transnational elites who do not claim allegiance to these spaces, why should architects attempt to inspire higher normative meaning? Is the result that the spaces after modernism have furthered rather than reversed a sense of emptiness and anonymity in city life? Box 8.2 The malling of America Take 100 acres of ideally-shaped flat land. Surround same by 500,000 consumers who have no access whatever to any other shopping facilities. Prepare the land and cover the central portion with 1,000,000 square feet of buildings. Fill with first-rate merchandisers who will sell superior wares at alluring prices. Trim the whole on the outside with 10,000 parking spaces and be sure to make same accessible over first-rate under-used highways from all directions. Finish up by decorating with some potted plants, miscellaneous flower beds, a little sculpture, and serve sizzling hot to the consumer. (Victor Gruen, Recipe for the Ideal Shopping Center, 1963 cited in The Harvard City Project 2001, p.162) To Harvey (2000) we are witness here to something more than multinucleated cities produced due to morphological constraints. Rather, as Harvey puts it:
the evidence suggests a dissolution of that simple doughnut urban form of inner city decay surrounded by suburban affluence (made so much of in the late 1960s), and its replacement by a complex checkerboard of segregated and protected wealth in an urban soup of equally segregated impoverishment and distress. (2000, pp.910) 147

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Harvey argues that this shift is based on the transition from a Fordist industrial capitalism to the Post-Fordist advanced flexible capitalism. Manuel Castells adopts a slightly different stance. Whereas, under advanced capitalism the distinction of urban and rural had been lost, as indicated by the suburb and sprawl, the state continued to provide what he calls the means of collective consumption in the form of services. By the 1990s, however, the capitalurban relationship was being exposed through globalisation. Post-industrial societies depended on the formation and impact of networks, knowledge-based systems and more complex relations between global, national, regional and local communities, thereby breaking the unity of urban space. Not surprisingly, given that the fragmented urban form has been most evident in Los Angeles, it is authors from what some have termed a Los Angeles School that have been at the forefront of explaining new urban form. Writers such as Ed Soja have focussed on the decentralised polynucleated sprawl of Los Angeles, looking at the new power structures that lie beneath (Soja, 2000). The post-modern urbanism before Soja is strongly tied to global capitalism, but more especially to the emergent emphasis on consumption and control (also Dear and Flusty, 1998). Indeed, to Soja cities have moved beyond the simple worlds of each function in a specified locale. As consumption, speed of flow, image and spectacle become the leitmotif of urbanism, there are no longer just artificial theme parks that you visit when you want but the new theme parks visit you wherever you may be. According to Michael Sorkin (1992) cities are mass-marketed for fast consumption becoming ageographical in which the need for people to be close to one another is undone by instant artificial adjacency. Vital to this shift is the creation of a city of simulations in which everything is generic, and the city is no longer the site of community and human connection. Rather than look solely to the urban periphery, the writing of Soja, Harvey and Sorkin brings back an interest in the condition of urbanism more generally. Let us look in more detail at three distinctive urban issues of the past 30 years: community and gentrification, public space, and gated communities.

Community and gentrification

The apparent homogenisation of city spaces, and notably the suburbs, the car, telephone and latterly the internet as a mode of communication, and the general sense of fear and mistrust has provoked some writers to lament the loss of community in the contemporary city. It is a theme that is especially associated with the work of Jane Jacobs. In 1961 Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities in which she argued that community represented a public social space that was broadly inclusive as opposed to many other forms of community, notably ethnic and religious communities that were essentially exclusionary. Focussing in on Greenwich Street in Manhattan where she lived and had been active in defending against the plans of Robert Moses, Jacobs suggested that inclusive community served a public good. Famously, she argued that communities looked out for one another, each person was the eyes and ears of the street, watchful for crime or danger. By her last book, the Dark Age Ahead (2004), Jacobs foresaw the collapse of North American culture as fecklessness weakened social bonds, dissolved public responsibility and the collective memory of history.

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Jacobs views have a number of resonances, most especially with the work of Robert Putnam on social capital (2001). In his phrase, Americans were increasingly bowling alone as membership of civil organisations diminished and people retreated away from the public realm to the private and individual. There was a decline of social capital, the bonds and bridges that network together members of a society and which enrich daily life. In fact, contrary to Putnam, many studies show little evidence that social ties diminish with city size. Indeed, as city populations have generally gotten healthier, wealthier and better educated, social interaction has changed in form but not in quantity (Curtis White and Guest, 2003). Quantity, however, belies diversity. The feeling of many observers is that as people buy into neighbourhoods based on social status and consumption opportunities, then affordability and the holding of broadly similar tastes will create homogeneous communities and the exclusion of others. Jacobs views also found considerable purchase with the emerging evidence for gentrification. A term originally coined by Ruth Glass to describe Notting Hill in London, Greenwich Village in Manhattan quickly became one of the most obvious examples of gentrification in the US. Initially gentrification was regarded as a relatively benign process whereby the middle classes were regarded as moving back to the city from the suburbs. Local governments were mostly supportive as the higher-income residents promised increased tax contributions and the regeneration of run down areas. With time, however, greater concern was expressed. Gentrification was not a return of the professional and managerial classes from the suburbs, but a movement within city boundaries, thereby rarely increasing the overall tax take. Gentrification was also often won through displacement of poorer households, more likely to be tenants, from ethnic minorities and dependent on welfare services. In the work of Neil Smith, gentrification was understood as a device to accumulate capital. Smith identified what he termed a rent gap. As an area deteriorates, Smith argued that landlords and developers have an incentive to renege on maintenance as rents fall and land values are low. At a certain point, however, the decline is reversed as it becomes profitable to change the use of the property. The potential higher rents make the properties attractive to developers, still able to buy in cheaply and construct units for middle-class tenants or owners. In his early work Smith regarded gentrification as a natural element to the workings of capital. In later work he showed that gentrification was also aided and abetted by local governments, notably in New York, adopting revanchist practices to drive out the homeless, counter-culture groups and ethnic minorities, to secure areas such as the Lower East Side (Smith, 1996). A different perspective is offered by the work of Sharon Zukin whose early work focused principally on SoHo, and latterly on Brooklyn. Zukin paid more attention to the cultural processes behind and within gentrification. How did gentrification reflect an emerging cultural or lifestyle trend that seemed at once different but also class-related and eventually consumeroriented? Zukin observed that the architecture of Manhattan supported gentrification, de-industrialisation had left many iron-frame buildings formerly occupied by sweatshops in the garment and printing trades vacant. These spaces were perfect for young artists who wanted openplan at low rents, creating lofts to open galleries and clubs. Radical chic secured the location, bringing in commerce and services but also reordering property values, making it no longer affordable to artists. Developers began to refurbish the lofts, and with time other properties, pushing the bridge-head artists from SoHo to Tribeca, from Tribeca to
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Chelsea, from Chelsea to the Lower East Side, Williamsburg and latterly to South Harlem. Zukins work shows the link between capital accumulation and aesthetic taste or lifestyle and the process whereby social areas in cities change their functions over time (see Zukin, 1995). This work was important because it pointed to how gentrification as an apparently worldwide process within capitalism appeared to be different across and within cities. The rent gap provides a relatively good grasp of gentrification in the US where real estate developers play a particular and more dominant role than in Europe, for example, where gentrification is more readily linked to smaller scale, individual, consumer tastes. Indeed, the rent gap might explain the supply side but it does not say anything about how the shared tastes to demand space is constructed. To that end, geographers have looked at changing gender relations and notably female participation in professional and managerial labour markets, the rise of the single-headed household (around one quarter of households in the UK), work-from-home arrangements, same-sex couples, the desire to link identities to cultural status. In a more recent reprise of his writing, Smith argues that gentrification needs to be seen as a global urban strategy (Smith, 2002). Outside the spaces of gentrification, but very much affected by it as a process and by globalisation, are the marginal populations. According to Loic Wacquant (1999) there is a regime of marginality marked out by a macro-societal drift towards inequality, changes to wage labour through casualisation, a retrenchment of the welfare state and the spatial concentration and stigmatisation of poverty (also Davis, 1990). Harvey would seem to agree. In Spaces of Hope he casts an eye back to the Baltimore that underpinned his 1973 Social Justice and the City to consider whether conditions have gotten better or worse. His summary is that looking beyond the gentrified theme park of the Harbour unemployment, discrimination, despair, and alienation. Repressions and anger are now everywhere in evidence (2000, p.11). Behind the waterfronts, shopping, financial and entertainment districts of cities across the world lie unfinished or never-started projects, buildings that no longer serve their primary purpose or are constructed of low-quality materials, sink housing estates and heroin alleys, second-hand markets, failing schools, and occasional overspills into riots as experienced recently in France, the United Kingdom and Los Angeles.

The death of public space

Public space has long been synonymous with the deepening of democracy and citizenship. What Marshall Berman calls an open minded public space developed around the cafs, bars, arcades and streets of Europe, with an equivalent in most other cultures. The key conditions are accessibility, an awareness of others presence, an appreciation of diversity and an acceptance of the value of communication. Unfortunately, a growing number of writers suggest that people are recoiling from public space into a world of individualism, of abstract freedom without human connection. Rather, people pass through public spaces, occasionally not knowing how to act in them, unable to read the signs of behaviour, perceiving threats that are not there. Demonstrations are licensed, and highly policed openly and surreptitiously (Mitchell, 2003). While Sorkin notes the medieval maxim was that city air makes people free, today there are no demonstrations in Disneyland (1992, p.xv). Fearful of antisocial behaviour, everyone is becoming anti-social. Conversations are rarely had; they are even more rarely encouraged.
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Architects, planners, designers and businesses are complicit in this death of public space even when the motivation might appear to be otherwise. Holly Whytes The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980) prompted the authorities in New York to reclaim public spaces such as Bryant Park in Midtown, just off Times Square, that by the early 1970s was associated with prostitution, gay hustlers, drug dealing and street traders. Operated by a Business Improvement District (BID) run by the large corporations bordering the Park, by the early 1990s Bryant was a privately policed, highly-controlled space with chairs, tables, coffee stands and public events from licensed live music to fashion shows (Zukin, 1995). Signs in the park indicate unacceptable behaviours, congregations more than just a few people are moved on, and the removal of hedges and the erection of short fences discourage crime. Elsewhere, public spaces have been leased to galleries and stores that impose rules on who can enter, how people can behave and how long they can stay, with mobility designed in through uncomfortable benches and overly small seats. The BID idea has now spread across the United States, from inception in New Orleans in 1975 to over 1,200 such areas by the early twentyfirst century. In New York especially, BIDs gained notoriety under the administration of Rudolph Giuliani and his police commissioner William Bratton whose Zero Tolerance and Broken Windows campaigns supported the removal of the homeless, long-established street traders and markets on vacant plots, and challenges to other non-governmental organisations such as those operating neighbourhood gardens. Indeed, in places such as Manhattan there are so many BIDS that territorial jurisdiction butt up to one another, creating almost a seamless web of for-profit governed zones. BIDs take many forms, some are not-for-profit while others are commercially oriented, aiming to enhance an immediate area, usually concentrating on the condition of public spaces, garbage collection, removal of graffiti, street maintenance and policing (Box 8.3). In most cases companies and residents are required to pay an additional levy for support of the BID (see Lloyd et al., 2003, for a critical review). Box 8.3 Chrysalis and the StreetWorks Program (Source: Sambale, 2005) Founded in 1984 by a Jesuit priest, Chrysalis distributed food and clothing to the homeless of Skid Row. Chrysalis soon shifted operations to locating employment for the homeless, notably the younger and more qualified, and for which it received considerable local government and business support. In 1993, this employment role took on a different dimension when the Central City Association, consisting of over 3,000 business and non-profit groups in Downtown Los Angeles, approached Chrysalis to join the Safe and Clean programme. Chrysalis provided employees to the programme, and in 1995 it was hired by the Broadway Improvement Business District to clean up a three-block stretch of Broadway. Chrysalis formed a commercial arm called StreetWorks that soon expanded to offer street cleaning and graffiti removal services across downtown and Santa Monica, extending from cleaning streets to beaches and open spaces. Street cleaning has become associated with the extension of privately-operated security firms in the Downtown, and ironically for Chrysalis, the removal of homeless people. Chrysalis has been accused of removing temporary shelters that give cover to the areas over 78,000 homeless, as well as their belongings and sometimes the homeless themselves. While less confrontational than the military-style removal programmes of the LAPD, Chrysaliss more subtle approach is effective. StreetWorks employees wear t-shirts distinguishing them with different colours from also t-shirted security firms, as well as other non-profit organisations that have set up to conduct similar operations. Hailed as a winwin, the ChrysalisBID relations have spread across Los Angeles. Where it operates, businesses report increased sales, and Chrysalis uses some of the funds to
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assist with work training, childcare and welfare for the homeless. Providing entry points to work has proven successful in a city with too few reliable programmes, and StreetWorks employs many of those who fail to get other job placements. The cost, however, is the pushing out of areas where homeless people can reside. Skid Row is targeted for redevelopment while providing no incentive for government to become involved. Yet, places of order often become specific targets of graffiti/tagging and the more controlled a space the more out of place groups such as the homeless, unemployed, counter-culture groups, whether deliberately or otherwise, appear to be. There is then a physical and metaphorical contest for how these spaces are represented with consequent legitimacy afforded to an agenda for social action.

The gated community

Leading writers on the urban condition express concern at what Soja (2000) has called the emerging carceral archipelago. In the fragmented and fractal city, defensive architecture, gates, razor wire, target hardening measures, CCTV and armed response signs, the placing of booms across roads, and the policing of graffiti, hawkers, unauthorised taxis and the homeless, creates spaces that are off-limits, at least to some. As Caldeira notes for the context of So Paulo, but with wider significance also, the existence of fortified enclaves make it difficult to maintain the principles of openness and free circulation which have been among the most significant organising values of modern cities (1996, p.303). These carceral spaces include certain parts of downtown, shopping areas, business parks, but perhaps the mostly widely represented in the literature is the gated community. Indeed, from once being a specific feature, gated communities or more euphemistically Common Interest Developments (CIDs) have become generic features of many contemporary cities. CIDs are understood as responses by certain groups, and not always the most wealthy, to the chaos and fear in and of the city. Hence CIDs offer physical security through walls, gates and guards, and as added measures the social life of communities give emphasis to self-defence classes from karate to handgun training. This notion of fear is furthered by talk of crime that stresses the criminality of the poor and the unreliability of the police. Hence CIDs exist in relatively low-crime cities such as Phoenix and increase in number even in cities where crime has fallen (Bogot). Developers, of course, attempt to reinforce the need for isolation with advertisements that liken CIDs to islands, oases or castles. Fear, however, goes beyond the concerns for security, even in locations such as Rio or Johannesburg. Rather, as Caldeira notes, the fear is of the inferior, the fear of mixing with people of a lower class or of certain ethnic groups. The irony, again, is that CIDs rely on large quantities of service personnel, including security guards, nannies, gardeners, health workers and maintenance crews from lower-class backgrounds. Although these are likely to be vetted as contract staff, Blakely and Snyder note that petty crime is higher in some CIDs than in the city more generally. Nevertheless, in cities, and societies, which are increasingly unequal and in which chance encounters might be diminishing people still feel a need to gate:
In sum, one of the consequences of living in cities segregated by enclaves is that while heterogeneous contacts diminish, social differences are more rigidly perceived and proximity with people from different groups considered as dangerous, thus emphasising inequality and distance (Caldeira, 1996, p.324). 152

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But does the act of gating draw attention to the possible consumption within? Finally, creating what McKenzie calls privatopias is an attempt to recreate a sense of community, and place, albeit based on individualist consumption practices. Ironically, CIDs are highly-planned environments, promoted by interests that are generally winners in the free-market and suspicious of planning, and their common nature imposes forms of collective governance through neighbourhood boards that impinge upon private property rights. McKenzie (1994) describes how some CIDs have rules for the height of lawn grass, the weight of pets, frequency and duration of parties, use of barbecues. Such self-government, of course, is not motivated by civic concern for others but a self-interest in maintaining property values. The need to maintain status, to micro-govern everyday life and the motivation of exclusion through fear may, as Gutersons (1992) wonderfully observed piece makes plain, provoke further anxiety. Guterson argues that gated communities are a re-marketed version of suburbia, with a lifestyle logo that masquerades as community; community has become the commodity. Activity 8.1 For a city that you know well, make a list of the new developments of the past 10 years. For whom are these developments meant? Are they primarily for business or residential groups, or mixed usage? Do they cater for international, national or local clientele? What is their architectural style and what does this style represent to you? Are the spaces within or around the development more or less policed than the rest of the city? To what extent have historical areas become part of new developments, perhaps as tourist zones? Do you feel that the city is more or less public than in the past, more or less safe, better or worse governed?

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: discuss the principal currents of thought in the study of cities discuss the combination of urban spatial and architectural form.

Sample examination question

Ed Soja has argued that we are all urbanists now (2003, p.269). What does he mean and what is the validity of his statement?

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Notes

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Chapter 9: An urbanising world

Further reading
Austin-Broos, D. Gay Nights and Kingston Town: Representations of Kingston, Jamaica, in Watson, S and K. Gibson (eds) Postmodern Cities & Spaces. (Cambridge, Mass.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). Birkbeck, C. Self-Employed Proletarians in an Informal Factory: The Case of Calis Garbage Dump, World Development, 6(9/10) 1978, pp.117385. Corbridge, S.E. and G.A. Jones Wither Urban Bias: The Thesis, Its Critics, Its Influence, and Implications for Poverty Reduction, Department Research Papers in Environmental and Spatial Analysis No. 99, 2005, LSE. de Soto, H. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Works in the West and Fails Just About Everywhere Else. (Black Swan, 2001). Dick, H.W. and P .J. Rimmer Beyond the Third World City: The New Urban Geography of South-east Asia, Urban Studies, 35(12) 1998, pp.230321. Gilbert, A.G. The Latin American City. (Latin America Bureau, 1998, revised and expanded edition). Ingram, G.K. Patterns of Metropolitan Development: What Have We learned?, Urban Studies, 35(7) 1998, pp.101935. Jones, G.A. Slums, in Harrison, S., S. Pile and N. Thrift (eds) Patterned Ground: Ecologies and Geographies of Nature and Culture. (London: Reaktion Press, 2004) pp.19092. Kaplan, R.D. The Coming Anarchy, The Atlantic Monthly, CCLXXIII(273) 1994, pp.4476. Koolhaas, R. Harvard City Project (2001): Lagos, in Koolhaas R., Mutations. (Barcelona: Actar Books, 2001). Malik, A. After Modernity: Contemporary Non-Western Cities and Architecture, Futures, (33) 2001, pp.87382. Potter, R. Urbanisation in the Caribbean and Trends of Global ConvergenceDivergence, Geographical Journal, (159) 1993, pp.121. Roy, A. and N. AlSayyad (eds) Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia. (Lexington Books, 2004). Satterthwaite, D. The Millennium Development Goals and Urban Poverty Reduction: Great Expectations and Nonsense Statistics, Environment and Urbanisation, 15(2) 2003, pp.18190. Turner, J.F.C. Barriers and Channels for Housing Development in Modernising Countries, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 33, 1967 pp.16781. World Bank, 2001. Cities Without Slums: Action Plan for Moving Slum Upgrading to Scale (see www.worldbank.org).

Aims of the chapter

While the Essential reading for this subject guide include excellent summaries of the contribution of geography to understanding of cities in the developed world they make only passing reference to cities in the developing world, largely in the context of world or global city debates. Yet it is important to realise that the geography of cities is changing in a number of very important respects. In an ever more urban world, the fastest and largest urban growth is in the developing world. This chapter will also provide an introduction to the valuable, perhaps increasingly critical, insights into how we understand urban geography from looking at cities in the developing world.
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Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: outline the key debates surrounding cities in the developing world discuss how an understanding of urban processes needs to include developing country cities present a critical overview of how cities in the developing world have been represented in the literature.

A new world urban geography

In Latin American in 1900 less than 10 per cent of the population resided in cities or towns and only Buenos Aires had close to one million inhabitants. In 1950, the number of million cities in Latin America had reached seven and by 1990 there were 40. What happened to Latin America during the twentieth century was occurring in most of North Africa and South-east Asia by the mid-century, and in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa by the latter decades. Between 1990 and 2010, 95 per cent of the worlds additional two billion people will be in urban areas. Most of that population growth will take place in developing countries. From about 38 per cent of the worlds urbanised population in 1950, by 2025 80 per cent of the worlds urban population will be in the South.1 In some countries, over 80 per cent of the population is expected to live in cities by 2025, with countries such as Brazil and South Africa that are already predominantly urban having to accommodate an additional 53 and 21 million people, respectively (see Table 9.1). China will register a majority of urban inhabitants in about 2020, with its cities accommodating an additional 335 million people compared to 1990. By 2025 it is expected that Africa will have 50 million more urban than rural dwellers (752 million compared to 702 million) and more people residing in towns and cities than in Latin America (566 million). Unlike previous decades the urban transition will be accompanied by small absolute decreases in rural population. Rural China, for example, is predicted to lose a net 131 million people, Indonesia 12.2 million, Russia 11.8 million and Turkey 4.5 million. How do we understand urban change if cities become a predominantly developing world phenomena? While colonialism sought to improve cities in what was to become the developing world, these improvements were only for a civilised few. The emergence of an idea of development in a post-colonial era offered more equitable urban change. For both economic and social reasons cities in developing countries were expected to converge through economic growth, technology and welfare. The idea that cities in the developing world are essentially following a similar pattern to those of the developed, and will converge if economic conditions and political decisions are right still pervades the policy literature and convinces some writers. According to Ingram, one can find comparable patterns of metropolitan development because many of these empirical regularities are quite consistent with urban location theory and tend to indicate the broad applicability of our basic theory to market-based cities (1998, p.1019). In essence, the idea is that since notions of human behaviour are universal if all people are allowed to behave equally they will live equally, and as developed countries are freer to express normal behaviour then convergence will be toward them. Ingram makes this point by comparing the better urban morphology of Paris compared to Moscow, and Bangkok compared to Kuala Lumpur. Indeed, in most cities in developed or developing countries there are some similar patterns:

Annual urban growth rates for developed countries were 0.86 per cent for 19752000 and will fall to 0.56 per cent for 20002025. In contrast, the annual growth rate for cities in developing countries stood at 3.7 per cent for 19752000 and will remain at 2.75 per cent until 2025 (UNHCS, 1996).

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Country

Urban Population 2000 (per cent) 2025 (per cent) Increase Urban Population 20002025 (millions) 0.94 53.3 4.40 334.9 14.3 279.4 15.5 4.1 31.4 12.4 1.06 9.98 4.63 -2.90 6.00 20.9 0.39 8.69 0.30 18.6

Albania Brazil Chile China Colombia India Kenya Malawi Mexico Mozambique Namibia Peru Poland Russia Senegal South Africa Trinidad & Tobago Uganda Ukraine Tanzania

39.1 81.3 84.6 34.3 74.9 28.4 33.1 15.3 74.4 40.2 40.9 72.8 65.6 77.7 47.0 50.4 74.0 14.2 72.5 27.8

53.8 88.1 88.5 52.2 82.6 42.5 50.9 28.6 80.6 57.4 58.9 80.7 75.1 84.2 61.9 61.8 81.9 26.4 80.8 44.9

Table 9.1: Urban population change 2000 and 2025 (Source: DfID, 2000, Annex 1)

densities decline centre-to-periphery; income profiles are moving outward; employment is decentralising and cities are becoming multi-centred. Potter (1993) and Dick and Rimmer (1998) take a different interest in convergence. Potter refers to World Systems and Dependency Theory (see Chapter 11) and focuses on a mode of production approach that argues that under capitalism we will witness the dissolution of vernacular urban forms. His paper concentrates, however, mostly on an explanation for which attributes in the urban landscape can be identified as the same or different to those characteristically found in developed country cities, or are produced by processes emanating from the developed world. Urban form, therefore, can be traced to endogenous or exogenous forces, centred around the economy starting with colonialism to the present. Dick and Rimmer claim that we are witness to a single urban discourse whereby the idea of a unique Third World city is obsolete divergence was a post-colonial blip turned around by globalisation. Either side of this blip colonialism imposed European styles via the garden suburb, the walking city and segregation based on race walled by infrastructure, and recently we see convergence via US-style urbanism that turns the city inside out with edge cities, gated suburbs, malls not markedly different whether in Dallas or Kuala Lumpur. The idea of convergencedivergence is obviously simplistic. Ingram for instance notes a tight general relationship between GDP and urbanisation (see page 1020), but he does not consider how for a number of poorer
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countries urbanisation has occurred over the past 30 years without sustained GDP growth. While conventional wisdom holds that cities have had higher returns to labour and capital than rural areas, as well as higher investment rates per capita and human development index scores, there is now concern for what is termed the urbanisation of poverty. Globally, about 330500 million people in developing countries live in absolute poverty, representing about 40 per cent of all poor and 25 per cent of the urban population, but by 2025 the urbanisation of poverty is expected to mean that one half of the poor in Africa and two-thirds in Latin America will be resident in urban areas (DFID, 2000, p.3). Some data put the increase in poverty at 12 million per annum 1987 1996. The 2000 World Bank Development Report demonstrated that between 1987 and 1998 those earning less than $1 per day increased from 1.18 to 1.20 billion. The next year in Globalisation, Growth and Poverty: Building the Inclusive World Economy, the Bank said that the proportion of poor declined by 200 million from 1980 to 1998, and offered no evidence of an increase between 1987 and 1998. Argument for underestimate in urbanisation poverty: 1. Preference for using $US1 per day as a measure is used inconsistently with DFID using $US1 per day at 1993 purchasing power parity whereas other agencies refer figures in 1985 dollars. As the 1985 dollar was worth about $US1.45 by 2000 many millions of people could pass the poverty threshold through dollar deflation rather than poverty alleviation. David Satterthwaite (2003) asks why international agencies consider locals able to live on $1 per day but allow themselves $100 per day, calibrated for urban and rural rates, different across countries. 2. Urban Monetised Economies poverty is a dynamic. Thus it is odd that 500 million urban dwellers are poor and 800 million lack access to adequate water and sanitation. The urban poor operate in monetised economies where land, housing and services are rarely free, defaulters are pursued vigorously and the incidence of indirect taxes can be high. With a baseline of minimum costs the poor are vulnerable to even moderate changes in prices and incomes, but especially to shocks brought by deliberate structural adjustment and financial crises. 3. Damn Lies and Statistics the urban world may also be poorer in terms of services. As Satterthwaite points out measures of urban services are biased against an unrealistic condition proximity. In terms of water measure is reasonable access to improved water, that is 20 litres per day per person within 1,000 metres of dwelling. Accordingly a 1995 Asian Development Bank survey of Mumbai found that 100 per cent had reasonable access to drinking water. Key conditions of quality, frequency supply and cost are not considered. Economic focus sees cities as engine for growth in a neo-liberal policy agenda and globalised context. Cities are centres of wealth creation OHP industry and commerce account for 80 per cent of most country GDPs, mostly urban, almost all financial services and most fiscal revenue urban. Close association urban to income (average 10 per cent higher GDP), industry, housing as per cent GDP , propensity to save liveable cities. Paradox that urban increasingly site of poverty over 500 million urban poor today over 60 per cent poor in LAC and EE urban, 2020 3050 per cent poor in SE Asia urban.
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Pro-urban economy language new agenda competitive (productivity capitals as much as double national), bankable. Key emphasis on governance and management. Moreover, there is little account of equity in the idea that city conditions generally will, and should, converge. Cities may contain better jobs, services, housing, but not for everyone and, for many, conditions have hardly improved for a long time. We can also ask questions about Potter, and Dick and Rimmers, reliance on the idea of political economy manifest in the landscape as urban geography. In Potter, we might ask why no account is given of convergence between developing countries: Brazil for example has strong cultural links through colonialism to Angola, and its cities could be better understood with reference to the experience of South Africa rather more than Oxford or Pittsburgh. We might also wonder how alike are developed country cities. In what way is Miami like Paris or London like Toronto? Who built Miami, London, Paris and Toronto anyway? It wasnt Americans, English, French or Canadians alone but also Mexicans, Cubans, Moroccans, Jamaicans and Pakistanis. Dick and Rimmers reliance on descriptive accounts of the city present the South-east Asian city through a middle-class lens of malls, gated communities, and business parks and commercial downtowns. Has there been convergence for the majority? Indeed, what is so First World about gated communities and bundled cities when few cities in Europe contain these spatial forms and many in the developing world possessed them before the developed. Convergencedivergence does set up some interesting questions for this chapter. Should the urban form in the South resemble that of European or US cities, or should form be unique to their context or region? Do we imagine the cities in the South to function differently from those of the North? Do we expect cities to increasingly look the same but function differently? Are the processes that produce cities likely to mean a convergence of urban form or a divergence? How do our ideas of convergence and difference change with economic, cultural and architectural readings of the city? In a globalised world can we sustain the idea of cities in the South as different, perhaps exotic, erotic, bizarre or dangerous? Do the cities in the South present and represent different spaces than cities of Europe or the US, for example accepted spaces of gentrification? Can these cities ever be modern, can they qualify as post-modern or have they always been so? I have selected an eclectic set of readings to address these questions, some of which speak to Northern cities while claiming to speak to all cities. As we saw in the previous chapter, urban theory has usually taken inspiration from developed world cities, notably Paris, London, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Geographers will now have to consider how far what we understand of cities written on the basis of developed world cities also applies to the developing world. We might even go so far as to argue that since the urban experience is increasingly located in the developing world, that urban theory and empirical study should learn more about Calcutta, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, So Paulo and elsewhere. We will also have to appreciate that rather than being the richest places on earth, cities can possess some of the poorest and most excluded people in a country. Size, of course, is not everything and the small cities of the developed world will out-punch less-developed country cities in terms of their economic weight. Moreover, as always, we must be careful to consider how we interpret data. While both Los Angeles and Calcutta represent apocalyptic visions of cities, Calcutta grew more slowly than Los Angeles during the twentieth century.

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Over-urbanisation, mega-cities and urban primacy

As discussed in Chapter 8, for centuries cities have had an image problem. The view of cities as centres of dirt, disease, vice and danger continued through colonialism into the post-colonial era. From different ideological perspectives, the new leaders of the developing world argued that their newly-independent countries had an opportunity to build cities that both addressed the urban problems and undid the effects of the colonial encounter with the West. In many cases, however, post-colonial policy was strongly anti-urban, at least in rhetoric (see Corbridge and Jones, 2005). Such anti-urbanism was strongest among some Communist regimes that emphasised agrarian-based development. Chairman Mao extolled the Chinese to learn from the countryside and to go up to the mountains and down to the villages, a view enforced between 1961 and 1972 with forced ruralisation that resulted in 20 million dead. To keep the anti-urban myth alive China reclassified many cities as towns and did not recognise urban planning until 1978. With the advent of development during the 1950s, theoretical justification came to underpin anti-urbanism. Hoselitz argued that developing countries were over-urbanising: whereas urban growth in England during the nineteenth century was about 2.5 per cent, in the developing world it was 4.2 per cent during the 1960s. This comparative analysis was given greater bite by Michael Liptons Urban Bias thesis that set out to answer why poor people stay poor, showing that it was because the urban poor were able to extract more resources than the rural because of rent-seeking by an urban elite. Thus, for example, the urban poor received subsidised food, keeping rural incomes down despite most poor people already being in the countryside. Lipton argued that it made more sense to invest in agriculture, or rural areas generally, as marginal returns were greater. Such unsympathetic views of cities remains a powerful image for the developing world and notably by development agencies (Corbridge and Jones, 2005). The dominant spatial approach to cities in development thinking became one of urban versus rural, with little attention given to what was going on within cities. The urban versus rural approach was supported by concerns that cities were becoming, simply, too big. One approach, popular during the mid-twentieth century, was to decentralise cities, encouraging population and economic expansion elsewhere through growth poles, and sometimes removing the political status of capital cities by establishing new capital cities. Today we have become accustomed to terms such as mega cities. Certainly between 1950 and 1995 the number of one million plus cities grew from 34 to 213. This growth of the very largest cities was found in a survey conducted by the UN in 1977 to be producing highly unacceptable spatial population distributions in 113 out of 119 lessdeveloped countries. Notwithstanding the low quality of data resulting in many incorrect estimates of future city growth (Table 9.2), planners became concerned that it was more expensive to provide for new residents in larger cities, creating a diseconomy with scale, and therefore with negative impacts on economic growth with primacy.2 In addition to the emergence of mega cities, therefore, attention was drawn to the impacts of exaggerated primacy in countries such as Thailand where Bangkok is 50 times the size of the next largest city Khon Khaen, and Mexico where Mexico City in 1970 was equivalent in size to the next 23 cities combined.3

2 Urban primacy is measured by the fourcity index; a ratio of the population of the largest city to the aggregate populations of the four largest cities in a country. 3

Primacy is not exclusively a developing country phenomenon: note that France is often described as Paris and the French desert.

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City

Prediction in 1976 for Year 2000

Actual Population in Year 2000 Millions

Error

Mexico City So Paulo Calcutta Seoul Jakarta Total

31.5 26 20.4 18.7 17.8

18.1 17.7 13.3 12.9 13

13.4 8.3 7.1 5.8 4.8 39.4

Table 9.2: Mega cities with minimal data (Source: Cohen (1976) Cities in Developing Countries, 19752000, Finance and Development, and World Bank Annual Development Report 2000).

The impacts were shown to be worse in politically unstable countries and those with authoritarian regimes: the main cities in a dictatorship were on average 50 per cent larger than their counterparts in more democratic regimes. Simply, dictatorships and instability draw people from countryside to cities, and fearing revolt governments appease the urban populace before the poorer rural populations, setting up a cycle of urban growth and social polarisation. As urban growth now exceeds the creation of productive industrial jobs, recent arrivals are added to the masses of unor under- employed. Useful data on city populations can be found at www.citypopulation.de/cities.html Over time researchers have argued that cities should become less able to fund the supply of basic services such as sanitation and transport. Yet, at one level the data suggest that conditions in most cities in developing countries appear to be improving, and are almost certainly better than in rural areas. Look at Table 9.3 which shows access to basic services for leading cities in Latin America. With a few exceptions conditions appear to be reasonably good. However, some caution is called for and geography is at the heart of such caution. First, access does not mean possession or the right to a particular service but refers to the availability of a service within 200 metres of a dwelling. Yet it is difficult to imagine, except perhaps in the largest slum conditions, that people in cities could be more than 200 metres from a service. Whether they can afford that service, whether they have any means to get that service to their home (how many of us want to carry water for a household 200 metres?), whether women or men, young and old, or particular ethnic groups have access is not considered. Is the service dangerous? Satterthwaite points out that in Nairobi slums children preferred to defecate on open ground rather than use communal latrine toilets as they were scared of standing over a high, narrow, wet and dirty pit with only a wooden board to support them, often in the dark and in the presence of strangers. The data say they have access to toilets, the NGO donor also believed this to be so; it was only the children who didnt! Second, what do we mean by service? The access to water indicated in Table 9.3 is suitable for drinking which is not the same as safe. Now look at Table 9.4. We can see immediately that the quality of data is suddenly less good indicated by the empty cells and that where data are available there is a wide disparity with the access data in Table 9.3. Note for example that in Lima, Peru, 81 per cent of households have access to
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water but only four per cent appear to have access to treated water. Most UN tables City Asuncin Buenos Aires Crdoba Prto Alegre Recif So Paulo Santiago Medelln Guayaquil Quito San Salvador Cd Jurez Len (Nic) Lima Water 100 100 99 97 98 100 100 77 89 82 92 81 Piped Water 46 100 99 99 89 98 100 100 70 85 82 89 78 75 72 Sewerage 8 98 40 87 41 95 99 99 42 70 80 77 Electricity 86 100 99 100 100 100 99 99 99 96 98 96 84 99 29 79 73 87 44 55 70 45 21 Telephone 17 70 80

Table 9.3: Access to basic services in Latin American cities (Table created using data from UN reports)

distinguish between the improved and adequate provision. Improved water is defined to include at least 20 litres/person within one kilometre of the persons home, with no reference to whether it is safe to drink, and improved sanitation can include shared facilities, with no mention of cleanliness or cost. Adequate water means a regular piped supply within the home or yard, and to an easily maintained toilet in each persons home with provision for hand-washing and the safe removal and disposal of toilet wastes. In any case, many surveys do not collect data from the worst areas of a city many of which are left as blank spaces on maps which are then un- or under-reported in official sources. There is also a reluctance to count certain informal solutions to problems of water or sanitation as adequate, thus while the quality of water brought into slums by water carriers is usually poor there is at least a reasonably regular supply. If we break down the data on waste the problem of data is even more alarming. Most people in Latin American cities have their waste disposed of in sanitary landfill, although a significant proportion is simply dumped in open ground. While the former is obviously preferable there is no indication here of any recycling. Many of my students would immediately think that recycling is an activity that can only come with development poor people cannot afford to recycle they would argue. Surely one of the most evocative images of slums is rubbish on open plots, clogging drains or blowing with the wind. Quite so. Yet in the slums there is also a far lower consumption of resources per capita than the city generally. In Mexico City, for example, a planner told me that elite households use four times more water per person to wash their cars than do poor households for their entire domestic needs. But also, it is in the poorer areas of the city that one can witness the most innovative environmental programmes, often spontaneously set up, not with a green or brown agenda in mind but as a business. Walk through a slum in Accra, Ghana, and one will
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see people collecting and sorting plastics, glass, tin, discarded vegetable matter. City Treated Water (per cent) 0 49 33 3 9 4 Solid Waste (Sanitary Landfill) 100 100 92 75 99 100 75 94 81 89 57 Solid Waste (Open Dump) 24 7 1 70 19 2 34

Asuncin Buenos Aires Crdoba Prto Alegre Recif So Paulo Santiago Medelln Guayaquil Quito San Salvador Cd Jurez Len (Nic) Lima

Table 9.4: Access to quality services in Latin American cities (Table created using data from UN reports) We should think then about the geography of the poorer parts of developing country cities. The idea of slums exploding, spreading like cancers and plagues, or mushrooms and weeds, or scarring the landscape is well established in many countries vocabularies, with the inference that if not already reached, cities offer a threat of paralysis, disintegration and are beyond planning (see Jones, 2004). It is worth noting that slum is a corruption of the word slime. We should note that being a slum dweller, and poor generally, has been widely perceived to be dirty, unskilled, drugged, prone to violence and criminality, politically volatile, and generally irresponsible thus suggesting simultaneously that the poor are to some extent deliberately the perpetrators of their own poverty and helpless victims. Consider, for example, the following quotes:
As a group the favela population is on the wrong side of every standard index of social disorganisation, whether it be illiteracy, malnutrition, disease, job instability, irregular sexual unions, alcoholismor almost any other on the familiar list. (Bonilla, 1970, 75, cited in Jones, 2004) Theyare the core of local despair and disaffectionunchecked, disregarded, left to grow and fester, there is here enough explosive material to produce in the world at large the pattern of a bitter class conflict. (Barbara Ward cited in Jones, 2004.)

This is a view of poverty that was given some credence by writers such as Oscar Lewis (19141970) during the 1950s and 1960s. Lewis believed that cities did not enhance a condition of social breakdown in the sense used by Wirth (see Chapter 8) or that the fate of the poor was entirely the result of capitalism as argued by Marxists. What interested Lewis was the contribution of the poor to their everyday lives, especially at the level of the family (rather than class) and in relation to culture (rather than
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economy). Nor did Lewis believe that government programmes alone would change the conditions of poverty, either in Puerto Rico or Mexico, or in New York, where he conducted the majority of his fieldwork. Rather, poverty had a strong cultural or behavioural component that made it resistant to change. Lewis used multiple autobiographies to gain access to culture which he thought to be inherited, persistent and predictable. Although he agreed with Wirth that cities became more diversified, creating new combinations of religion and speech for example, Lewis believed that the poor displayed common characteristics such as a high death rate, low education, a high proportion of women and children in employment, and only a limited interest in politics. He went on to look at the dynamics of poverty that included violence, alcoholism, early initiation in sex, free unions of marriage, fatalism and a high tolerance for psychological pathology. Lewiss point was that these conditions form a sub-culture within which he claimed to have identified 70 traits. He did not claim that these characteristics were necessarily negative in that they got the poor through a tough life but he failed to identify explicit positives. In reference to the Sanchez family in Mexico City he observed:
Certainly the lives of the poor are not dull. The stories in this volume reveal a world of violence and death, of suffering and deprivation, of infidelity and broken homes, of delinquency, corruption, and police brutality, and of the cruelty of the poor on the poor. These stories also reveal an intensity of feeling and human warmth, a strong sense of individuality, a capacity for gaiety, a hope for a better life, a desire for understanding and love, a readiness to share the little they possess, and the courage to carry on in the face of many unresolved problems. (The Children of Sanchez, 1961, p.xxi)

The danger of Lewiss work is that it suggests that the poor are poor because of their own values. Consider this quote:
With the exception of one brother who died of typhus, all of Guadelupes brothers died of drink. Even her father was drunk when he died. (1978, p.19)

Lewis goes on to attribute most other deaths in the family to drink, including the loss of infants, and to fatalism inherent in folk Catholicism. Whether these conditions, however, could be described as a way of life or the characteristics of poverty and to what extent they were logical responses whereby resorting to extra-legal methods to get by, for example, seems a reasonable response to structural problems of development, remains a matter of considerable debate. Yet, sympathy for Lewis remains. Was he blaming the poor or showing that they had some responsibility for their plight? Unlike most academics of his age (and since) Lewis refused to see the poor as a single group and preferred presenting views of daily life in their own words rather than using metaphors. Such a view of the poor and their urban conditions is sorely lacking in more recent analyses. Consider, for example, Robert Kaplans description of West Africa:
The forty-five minute journey in heavy traffic was through one never-ending shanty-town: a Dickensian spectacle to which Dickens himself would never have given credence. The corrugated metal shacks and scabrous walls were coated with black slime. Stores were built out of rusted shipping containers, junked cars, and jumbles of wire mesh. The streets were one 164

Chapter 9: An urbanising world long puddle of floating garbage. Mosquitoes and flies were everywhere. Children, many of whom had protruding bellies, seemed as numerous as ants. When the tide went out dead rats and the skeletons of cars were exposed on the mucky beach. In twenty-eight years Guineas population will double if growth goes on at current rates. Hardwood logging continues at a madcap speed, and people flee the Guinean countryside for Conakry. It seemed to me that here, as elsewhere in Africa and the Third World, man is challenging nature far beyond its limits, and nature is now beginning to take revenge. (1994, p.54)

As noted above, Kaplans children-ants follow a long-standing imagination of the slum as dirty, animalistic and dangerous. The association of slums with social pathology and a Malthusian ecological threat is often repeated by pessimists and by those who advocate upgrading or regeneration: see Jones (2004) for discussion of images in the Cities without Slums report. For the people living in slums there is a desire to challenge these images, and gradually geographers and urban writers have noted how even in the poorest parts of cities, houses are decorated with plants and flowers, and in some cases fruit trees or cultivated vegetables, even reclaimed wood or tin are painted, interiors are personalised with photographs, pictures torn from magazines and treasured objects. So, despite 600 million people living in inadequate housing worldwide, we must be careful not to consider informality as co-terminus with pathology. How then have we understood informality?

The informal sector and self-help

As indicated in Table 9.5 the informal sector is a significant part of nonfarm employment. Until the 1980s there was still a widely-held view that development was to be generated by the formal sector, and that the presence of an informal sector was an aberration to a well-functioning economy. This view was informed by the work of researchers such as Arthur Lewis who was mentioned in Chapter 7. To Lewis the movement of people from rural to urban areas offered a virtuous cycle in which labour increased total production, which created profits for reinvestment and hence more employment. Since marginal productivity in agriculture was zero/negative the exodus of rural workers to cities would not affect total agricultural output and therefore would not raise prices for agricultural products and thus food costs would not add pressure to industrial wages. The model makes a virtue out of uneven income distribution as a prerequisite for development in which employment would increase but an unlimited supply of labour would keep wages at subsistence levels: increased wages to workers would be too small to affect consumption but would drain savings for investment. The end of the cycle would only arrive once the marginal productivity of labour in the rural sector became positive, at which point wages would rise in order to attract more workers from rural areas and society would be at a full level of employment. Lewiss work was based on a number of critical assumptions. First, that migration from the rural to urban areas was proportional to jobs offered, despite evidence of unemployment. Second, that entrepreneurs would reinvest profits despite ample evidence of what we call conspicuous consumption, or spending on luxury goods, and adoption of more capital-intensive techniques. Third, the model assumed a perfect substitution between rural migrants and trained urban workers without including training costs or the barriers put up by unions. But what did
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people do while waiting for their chance in the industrial sector? Lewis acknowledged that migrants would not all immediately find employment in the modern sector and instead would take on a whole range of casual jobs the workers on the docks, the young men rushing forward asking to carry your bag as you appear, the jobbing gardener and the like (Lewis, 1954, p.141). These workers, however, did not need support. Indeed, in a context in which modernisation theory emphasised industrialisation with heavy state investment to increase productivity, the generally small-scale, labour-intensive nature and service orientation of what we were later to call the informal sector made it an unattractive option for development planners. The informal sector was dismissed as incapable of generating productivity gains and leading to growth, and Lewis proposed that it offered migrants with low skills a temporary means of subsistence while they looked for a job in the modern sector. Country Benin Ethiopia South Africa Brazil Peru India Pakistan Philippines Russian Federation Turkey Informal (per cent) 46 49.2 21.3 27.3 53.8 51.3 63.8 17.3 4.5 10.2 Male (per cent) 50 37.1 16.1 27.4 48.9 53.7 64.1 15.8 4.4 10.4 Female (per cent) 41 64 28.4 27.1 60.6 40.6 60.7 19.4 4.7 9.4

Table 9.5: The informal sector (non-farm) (Source: Adapted from International Labour Organisation, World Employment Report, 20042005, p.107) It was evident to most observers, of course, that Lewiss belief that underemployment was temporary did not hold, and nor did it appear that the modern sector could absorb the available supply of labour. In 1972 we therefore read the term informal sector for the first time, attributed to Keith Hart who used it to describe the income-generating activities of unskilled migrants in Accras informal settlements, and it was popularised by the International Labour Organisations (ILO) influential report Employment, Incomes and Equality: A Strategy for Increasing Productive Employment in Kenya (1972) that suggested as much as 2530 per cent of total urban employment in Kenya was informal. The ILO attempted to understand why the modern sector was not absorbing labour in significant quantities to stem the rise of unemployment and poverty, and to identify policy solutions as to how to reverse this situation. Specifically the Report saw industrialisation policies and structural inequalities especially a reliance on capital as inhibiting growth. The Report also attributed imbalances to colonial era government, especially the high levels of inherited income inequality, restrictive legislation, unequal distribution of land and high urban primacy. Last, the Report highlighted the absence of social security as masking unemployment without security many people engage in any job, however badly remunerated. Attention now shifted to understanding the day-to-day activities of the informal sector, which was seen as a way of doing things rather than dealing with what the sector was not, in other words, not formal or
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modern. Researchers found a sector characterised by the ease of entry, a reliance on indigenous resources, family ownership of small-scale enterprises, labour-intensive and adapted technology, skills acquired outside the formal school system and highly competitive markets. The ILO also squashed two popular (mis)conceptions of informal employment. First, it challenged a view that informal sector workers were temporary inhabitants or occasional migrants who put pressure on services and who could be induced to return to rural areas. Second, it opposed the view that employment was infrequent and concentrated in socially harmful activities a view promoted by geographical proximity of informal to illegal activities. The ILO demonstrated that only five per cent of those surveyed in informal settlements described themselves as unemployed, while 45 per cent were engaged in wage-labour mostly as carpenters, tailors and in transport services. The informal sector was now given positive connotations and ILO backing gave it standing in development circles, rather being considered a matter for anthropology. The ILO lobbied governments not to oppose the informal sector or, worse, to bulldoze settlements, markets or workshop premises. Such negative policies simply created disincentives for dwellers to invest in higher-quality more permanent structures and services with consequent positive impacts on living standards. This positive view, however, was not challenged from the Left. Perhaps the most influential writer was Milton Santos (1975) who took an exploitative view arguing that labour-intensive self-employment was subordinated to the power of the formal sector, keeping everyones wages low. Santos eschewed a formal/informal distinction in favour of a more relational approach between a dominant (capitalist) and dominated (petty commodity production) circuit. Placing his analysis within an historical context, Santos described how developing countries have evolved according to particular technological waves that in turn resulted in two circuits, an upper and a lower circuit. The lower circuit corresponds to labour-intensive small-scale activities and the upper circuit represents the capital-intensive and larger-scale activities. In the lower circuit social relations are not characterised by the profit motive, but rather by nonwage related factors such as family labour, the apprentice system and close relations between producers and clients. This allows for wages to be kept low. Due to the small-scale nature of exchange in the lower circuit and limited capital accumulation this mode of production is not autonomous in so far as no savings can be made sufficient to allow for an expansion of production and economies of scale. In other words, the lower circuit cannot harness the necessary resources to grow independently the upper circuit dominates the lower circuit due to its ability to accumulate large amounts of capital both locally and abroad, and to determine demand for goods and services in the lower circuit. Support for the Santos-style approach came from research in Colombia. Birkbecks (1978) study of Cal garbage pickers in particular showed how thousands of pickers nominally in the informal sector were organised to supply one large firm (Cartn de Columbia) in the formal. Through a network of central and satellite warehouses owned by intermediaries, many of whom were in debt to Cartn, and self-employed garbage pickers paid according to quality and quantity of waste paper at prices set by Cartn, the company benefited from cheap labour and avoidance of organisational costs. The average picker was shown to earn three times less than a Cartn de Columbia employee who also received social security benefits. The power of the pickers to challenge this arrangement was undermined by their lack of organisation; essentially each workers
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livelihood depended on competition with others. Birkbecks study concludes that interaction of the formal and informal sectors is the cause of poverty and not its solution. The exploitative view gives little credence to how conditions might be improved through credit provision or technical assistance training, or how at least certain activities might be profitable in the short term. For an excellent review of urban informality see Roy and AlSayyad (2004). More positive views of the informal sector have come from two sources. First, a corpus of work looking at housing in squatter settlements argued that self-help housing, rather than being inadequate and with limited possibilities for improvement, represented an architecture that works.4 Indeed, self-help was shown to be cheaper than formal public sector housing. John Turner, who became an influential figure in putting urban issues into the UN framework with the creation of UN-Habitat in 1976, used a case study of Pedro Mineiros in Rio whose rent contract was based on the minimum wage, giving his housing an appearance of affordability, but he had to undertake a two- to three-hour journey to work while the apartment could not be adapted to enterprises or additional family members. Turner believed that self-help housing cost about one-half of an instant unit. Rather than being sites of despair and marginal it was noted that:
In Davao, the squatters are so firmly entrenched that a number are building costly houses. Lawyers, physicians, dentists, and managers of clinics and well-financed enterprises have boldly hung out their signs. (Abrams, 1966, p.16)

Interest in self-help housing goes back at least as far as the nineteenth century, when communitarian interests focussed on the purer styles of the frontier or idealised the arts and crafts movement. Selfhelp was also inuential in the1940s through the US-funded Operation Bootstraps in Puerto Rico and the reappraisals of slums in US cities as slums of hope.

Indeed, Turner claimed that the poor possess the bulk of the nations human and material resources for housing, their small savings capacity is collectively enormous and their manual skills (and time) far surpass the financial and administrative capacity of larger state or private corporations. It was observed that house builders in squatter settlements used building materials from the formal sector, but purchased these through informal merchants who broke down large quantities into smaller bundles, raising the price (for profit) but allowing affordability according to the rhythm of social and economic change (Turner 1967, p.1). Some suppliers also provided credit (sometimes at high rates of interest) and arranged artisans or dealt with politicians and planners to turn a blind eye to illegal land encroachment or building standards. Rather than being outside of the city squatter settlements were intimately integrated into the city economy and polity, and that given indications of security for example the tacit recognition by a politician that a settlement would be allowed to remain, or the provision of rubbish collection or a police outpost, these informal settlements improved (consolidated) over time. Unlike the sometimes (to this day) antagonism to informal street traders, and compared to other development fads, the positive view of selfhelp housing has endured. The Millennium Development Goals, for example, have a significant improvement in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020 as one of the key indicators to the attack on world poverty (although absolute numbers of slum dwellers are predicted to double by 2025). International agencies and many NGOs engage in what is termed assisted self-help or upgrading. These approaches aim to support existing social and economic networks, reduce the often high levels of displacement that accompany major infrastructure works, raise the quantity of green spaces by improving layouts, and be more sustainable by using the local inhabitants as labour. The World Bank estimates that while a new housing unit costs $10,000, an existing house
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can be upgraded for as little as $38 per capita (excluding mainline infrastructure). The second, and positive, view of informality to emerge in recent years is associated with the research of Hernando de Soto. In counterpoint to Santos, de Soto views the informal sector as autonomous of the formal and inhabited by micro-entrepreneurs who produce goods and services that are consumed within the sector. However, these entrepreneurs are held back from doing more by regulations that favour formal firms. As de Soto shows for Lima during the 1980s the economy is increasingly informal: of 331 markets in the city 274 were informally run and 95 per cent of public transport was informal. Overall, the informality accounted for 48 per cent of the labour force, 61 per cent of the man-hours and 38 per cent of GDP . But the costs of being or becoming formal are too high. In the case of a small sewing plant it would take an owner 289 days to complete the 11 requirements to become formally registered, imposing a cost equivalent to $1,036 in lost profit. To comply with all the regulations to build a market would take 17 years. If they do get that far then entrepreneurs also face the costs of remaining formal. Among these were the costs of yet more administrative procedures that took up approximately 40 per cent of administrative employees total working hours and the higher costs of paying utility bills that represented about 11 per cent of company revenue. Against these costs are the costs of illegality including bribes, paying taxes without being able to claim rebates, costs of tax evasion, keeping earnings as cash and little access to loans beyond moneylenders with interest rates five times those available at banks. To de Soto, bad laws create informality and make people poor. People resort to this system of extra-legal norms because of the pressures exerted by the state, that is to say, the formal system. Despite the innovation of de Sotos original findings, his ideas have motivated calls to rollback the state and to deregulate urban life, and resulted in vehement attack as nave and counter-productive to the poor.

Contemporary images
Urban geography and urban studies desperately need to find new ways to think about cities in developing countries, and about their poorest areas in particular. We need to recapture some of the innovation that, if sometimes misguided or misinterpreted, marked the work of Oscar Lewis, John Turner and others. Fortunately, there are some interesting contributions that challenge the negative stereotyping of cities and slums (also Malik, 2001). Austin-Broos (1995), for example, has offered a way of looking at Kingston, Jamaica, through music. She regards Kingston as a medium through which to analyse modernity, from being an exotic haven for a Western (cultural) elite typified by the character of Noel Coward for whom the nights were gay, to a city that signalled hope for the poor through development, to a city of post-modern transgression through downtown life that refuses to mask Jamaicas history (p.150). To Austin-Broos these three periods have their musical moniker. Harry Belafonte evoked Kingston as a backwardness beyond modernity, which can accommodate the traveller or other from the hectic mundane life of the US eastern seaboard. Later, Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff, especially the latters The Harder they Come (1972), suggests how people move to the city, are tricked, turn to drugs and gangs, and are denied the alternative of Cuba. Overlapping with the Manley government modernity is offered but falters and the city breaks down into segregated yards. As the music becomes transnational so does the population with Miami increasingly the counterpoint to Cuba.
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Finally, the music of Shaba Ranks, Austin-Broos argues, reveals a postmodern people that only half believe the myths of modernity proposed for Jamaica and the metropolitan world. They may want the commodities of a modern world but not the individuation that strips them of kin or the rootlessness that leaves them un-Jamaican (p.151). AustinBroos here equates physicality with a disquiet about modernity men learn to walk slowly with very long strides, women traders are described as fatthin, and she draws together (p.159) poverty, race and culture into not simply coincidences but phenotypes that have inscriptions on the body. So, while racially the middle-class are the same as the poor, they regard them as different the downtown becomes a ghetto and feared, a disorganised, shabby people, unruly vendors and the insane on the streets. The periodisation may not work and some of the imaginary of danger, dirt and despair is presented somewhat romantically but the use of music rather than data on the economy, housing conditions or crime statistics can be just as insightful about the place of the city. Rem Koolhaas (2001) offers an equally innovative view of Lagos, Nigeria. Like Kingston, Lagos is very few peoples idea of a paradigmatic city in any positive sense. Koolhaas, however, argues that the fundamental conundrum of Lagos is that it can be considered both a paradigm and pathological extreme of the West African city. Seen from the air Lagos is a contrast of supermodern highways (with few cars) sweeping across lagoons bordered by slums and yards, of tin roofs and houses on stilts, of gridlock congestion and dizzying hyperactivity. This is not a city in the conventional sense:
Lagoss slowness has hardened. The expressways, originally dumped on the city to bind disparate destinations and origins, are now almost completely unrecognisable to the planners eye. On a map they still look like they organise the city. The view from above seems to make sense the city is interconnected. But at each of the plans intersections this omniscience collapses. The Lagos street is inadequately described by throwaway terms like channel, communications artefact, flow space, or arena for social expression. Lagos has no streets; instead, it has curbs [kerbs] and gates, barriers and hustlers that control separate landscapes. Some areas might look like streets; they might even look like superhighways. But even the Lagos superhighway has bus stops on it, mosques under it, markets in it and buildingless factories throughout it. (p.686)

As he points out, Lagos is remarkable for its continued existence and productivity in spite of a near-complete absence of those infrastructures, systems, organisations, and amenities that define the word city in terms of Western planning methodology (p.652). In order to explain how a city that is everything the development city should not be is nevertheless a working city, Koolhaas proposes that we change our perspective. Lagos, he argues, is better understood as a form of collective research, conducted by a team of eight to twenty-five million (p.719). These researchers live in what Koolhaas calls the asymptomatic city. Against the idea of the city on a linear trajectory from underdeveloped to developed, split between formal and informal, and with the global marked out in the financial centres and business parks, the asymptomatic city marks a steady state, a city standing still not catching up with the developed world. In order to get by in Lagos people have to find ways to recycle everything to create something new, potentially valuable but temporary. In some places livelihoods require the city to be destroyed
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area boys dig up roads to re-route or slow traffic for through-window sales or crime. Roads then are not functional arteries between two points, but provide multiple getting on/off points, and efficiency is not measured in terms of speed or ride time to somewhere else but are functional as their own destination. Spaces of the city are described in terms of stoppages, shortages, storage, stalling, overcompensations, and material depositions (p.686). As he describes the Alaba market, here is a total self-help effort, it is self-policed, has its own system of taxation and regulation that strips broken electronics, much of them imported from Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, for parts to be reused or exported to the rest of Africa. Activity 9.1 You are the City Manager of a large developing country city. About 30 per cent of the city is classified as slum and a further 30 per cent is of reasonable quality but occupies land illegally. Only 20 per cent of households have access to adequate services. About 20 per cent of the population is unemployed and 50 per cent gets by in the informal sector. As City Manager your only budget is from the Minister of Urban Affairs who has asked for five recommendations to solve the urban problem. What are your five recommendations, by priority, and how do you justify each one?

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: outline the key debates surrounding cities in the developing world discuss how an understanding of urban processes needs to include developing country cities present a critical overview of how cities in the developing world have been represented in the literature.

Sample examination questions

1. Cities in developing countries today face similar problems to those in the developed world a century ago. To what extent is this an accurate and justifiably optimistic statement? 2. The informal sector is the solution and not the problem in developing country cities. Discuss.

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Notes

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Chapter 10: Global cities

Essential reading
Cochrane, A. Cities, in Daniels, P . et al. (eds) An Introduction to Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008). Hamnett, C. Urban forms, in Cloke, P . et al. (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Knox, P . World Cities and the Organisation of Global Space, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).

Further reading
Beaverstock, J., R. Smith and P . Taylor World-City Network: A New Metageography?, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 90(1) 2000, pp.12334. Beaverstock, J.V ., P . Hubbard and J.R. Short Getting Away With It? Exposing the Geographies of the Super-Rich, Geoforum, (35) 2004, pp.40107. Blakely, E. and M. Snyder Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States. (Washington, D.C.; Cambridge, Mass.: Brookings Institute, c.1999). Borja, J. and M. Castells Local and Global: Management of Cities in the Information Age. (London: Earthscan, 1997). Davis, M. The City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles. (London: Verso, 1990). Friedmann, J. The World City Hypothesis, Development and Change, 17(1) 1986, pp.6983. Friedmann, J. and G. Wolff World City Formation: An Agenda for Research and Action, Internatonal Journal of Urban and Regional Research 6 1982, pp.30944. Harvey, D. Spaces of Global Capitalism. (London: Verso, 2006). King, A.D. Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture, Urbanism, Identity. (London: Spon, 2004). Knox, P .L. and P .J. Taylor (eds) World Cities in a World System. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Krugman, P . For Richer, New York Times, 20 October 2002; http://faculty.pnc. edu/arw/gbg344/For%20Richer.htm Marcuse, P . The Enclave, the Citadel and the Ghetto: What Has Changed in the Post-Fordist US City?, Urban Affairs Review, 33(2) 1997, pp.22864. 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. Milanovic, B. Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). Robinson, J. Global and World Cities: A View from off the Map, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 26(3) 2002, pp.53154. Sassen, S. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). Sutcliffe, B. World Inequality and Globalisation, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 20(1) 2004, pp.1537.

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Aims of the chapter

Three previous chapters in this subject guide have given us much of the infrastructure needed to understand how globalisation has affected urban form. In Chapter 4 we discussed the changing nature of economies, and the emergence of the global or transnational economy, in Chapter 5 we introduced the idea that nation-states might be in decline with either regional or borderless forms of governance emergent, and in Chapter 7 we looked at how population movements were becoming less predictable. In this chapter I want to outline how these changing economic, political and demographic processes are having distinct urban impacts. I will introduce the notion of the World and Global city, and consider their principal characteristics as well as a critique.

Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: discuss the concepts of World and Global cities, and the differences between them critique the idea of the Global City.

Definitions of global and world cities

The combination of spatial dispersal of production processes and global integration of markets has created a new strategic role for cities as the nodes of information networks. According to Sassen (2001), even in a world with better communications command functions are needed to manage and coordinate global/regional market integration, to generate and disseminate information, to test and track innovations, and to identify gaps in the market. Second, certain cities serve as global production centres embedded in a network of multi-production circuits. These two basic global functions take place because increasingly global production circuits are more decentralised and less hierarchically governed, contributing problems for integration and coordination. Although, by definition, globalisation should be everywhere then all cities today are world cities (King, 2004). Most studies, however, emphasise a select group of cities where a unique set of cultural, social and economic processes are taking place, and which sit within a particular set of connections (Borja and Castells, 1997). Here, we need to distinguish between the terms world and global cities. Although regarded as a quintessential feature of the late twentieth century, world city was coined by the British polymath Patrick Geddes in 1915. The planner Peter Hall picked up the term in 1977 as a useful descriptor for a subset of cities that were both large relative to most other urban forms in their national contexts and against an international meter, and which seemed to be performing a range of dominant economic and political roles. It is, however, in the work of John Friedman and Goetz Wolff (1982, 1986) that the most coherent account for a new urban order is provided. Friedmann and Wolff offer the hypothesis of a spatial articulation of the emerging world economy through a global network of cities that serve as strategic sites for production and producer services. Their work sets forth a framework for the identification of world cities based on hierarchical position in the transnational system of space economy. Key to being classified as either Alpha, Beta or Gamma was the mode and extent of the citys integration into the world economy and the scope of its geographical dominance in its articulation of the world economy.

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The world city concept forwarded by Friedmann and Wolff has become the basis to a series of maps and diagrams outlining how cities differ from one another in their position on a hierarchy. The Global and World City Network (GaWC) at Loughborough University has produced a number of these, building in most cases on the Friedmann and Wolff schema. GaWC also contains a large collection of case study materials that are worth looking at, including studies of thematic networks across cities (for law firms, advertising, financial flows), policy interventions and more general city-specific studies. See www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/ It is worth recalling that the object of the exercise in 1982 was to provide a device to ask questions about cities in general. Unfortunately, we might argue, the idea of the world city as an intellectual device to explore the geographical connections across cities and other spaces, has given way to an exercise in taxonomy, of matching a preordained list of in-situ characteristics. The precursor term world city has become increasingly replaced by global. In setting out to define this category of cities, studies have again highlighted the primary role in the global economy, notably through transnational business connections (Sassen, 2001). To Sassen, globalisation is driving a process that connects advanced services, producer centres and markets in a global network, and that all of them function in relation to the consolidation of a global market:
Apart from issues related to capital, labour markets, goods and services are becoming increasingly globally traded, in this regard, cities around the world are rising as regional centres connecting the network of interactions on which the global trade is based ground outwards. (2001, p.3)

Sassen identifies changes in international banking and finance, a series of advanced producer services and the concentration of corporate headquarters in certain command centres as the main force behind the formation of global cities. Although advanced services are present in all large cities and in nearly all countries, it is claimed that the higher levels of concentration of advanced service networks can be seen only in particular nodes (Beaverstock and Taylor, 2000). The notion of the command centre is a useful tool so long as it is limited to the identification of (market) command processes, of the dynamics and interaction between different actors taking place in these cities, and of the network of cities and the power and economic hierarchy associated to them. At the top of the global city hierarchy are New York, London and Tokyo, which Sassen proposed have joint dominance in international finance and in most consulting and business services of international scope. Furthermore, these three command centres cover the principal time zones for the purpose of financial trading, and work largely as a unit in the same system of endless transactions, with gaps filled by niche emerging markets. Behind the Big Three, however, is a growing list of would-be global city candidates, some of which are present in Table 10.1.

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Presence of major producer service firms (scores) 1999 Hong Kong Singapore Mexico City So Paulo Seoul Moscow Jakarta Johannesburg Bangkok Shanghai Bombay/ Mumbai Cairo Tokyo New York London 10 10 8 8 7 7 6 6 5 4 3 2 12 12 12

Headquarters and subsidiaries (numbers) 1996

Stock exchange apitalisation (US$ million) 1998

Regional, inter-regional, and total international destinations of direct flights 2001 12 + 62 = 74 34 + 74 = 108 16 + 32 + 8 = 56 16 + 9 + 22 = 47 39 + 50 = 89 48 + 86 = 134 4 + 24 = 28 40 + 26 = 66 14 + 76 = 90 16 + 25 = 41 3 + 46 = 49 18 + 20 + 38 = 76 11 + 71 = 82 51 + 8 + 75 = 134 113 + 168 = 281

Population (millions) 2000

GNP at PPP per capita (US$) 1999

40 35 28 25 3 + 23 6 15 8 22 1 + 16 8 9 30 + 36 24 + 45 5 + 45

343,394 94,469 91,746 160,887 114,593 20,598 22,106 170,252 34,903 231,322 105,188 24,381 2,495,757 13,451,352 2,374,273

6.9 3.6 18.1 17.8 9.9 9.3 11.0 2.3 7.3 12.9 18.1 10.6 26.4 16.6 7.6

20,939 27,024 7,719 6,317 14,637 6,339 2,439 8,318 5,599 3,291 2,149 3,303 24,041 30,600 20,883

Table 10.1: Economic and demographic indicators for cities and countries (Sources: Service producer rms from Beaverstock, Taylor, and Smith (1999); headquarters and subsidiaries from Godfrey and Zhou (1999, 2000); stock market capitalisation from Economist (2001); ight departures from OAG (2001); city population from United Nations (2001); http:// sociology.uconn.edu/)

The global city arguments most closely associated with the work of Saskia Sassen offer two refinements to the earlier ideas of the world city. First, Sassen puts more emphasis on the political conditions necessary to the establishment of the global city. According to Sassen:
with the partial unbundling or at least weakening of the national as a spatial unit due to privatisation and deregulation and the associated strengthening of globalisation, comes conditions for the ascendance of other spatial units or scales. Among these are the sub-national, notably cities and regionsI locate the emergence of global cities in this context and against this range of instantiations of strategic scales and spatial units. In the case of global cities, the dynamics and processes that get territorialised are global (2001, p.xviii) The 1980s saw a major shift in the global economy. During that decade deregulation and internationalisation of a growing range of economic activities and markets became hallmarks of economic policy in all highly developed countries. Global economic trends engendered a new framework for national economic policy makingAt the heart of this framework is a new conception of the role of national borders: borders no longer are sites for imposing levies, but rather transmitting membranes guaranteeing the free flow of goods, capital and 176

Chapter 10: Global cities informationTwenty-first century economics is about an economy which is itself transnational, and about governments which coordinate rather than contain economic activities. (1999, pp.15051)

Global cities then capture a distinctive feature of the global political economy, the demise of the nation-state and the rise of alternate or reordered political scales. The first level of this reordered political space is the importance of international organisations, from the UN agencies, big non-governmental organisations (BINGOs), the World Trade Organization and other multilateral groups that tend to locate in global or second-tier cities (Knox, 1995). The second level is the changing role of local government. Albeit with the assistance of national government, it is to local city governments that the pressure to attract and retain global capital has fallen. From roles limited to rubbish collection, park maintenance and planning, city governments now increasingly represent themselves as marketing agencies seeking to brand the city and provide amenities that give the city buzz. City branding exercises can range from the abstract heart for New York to a stress on climate, security, leisure or can-do business ethos. Governments put considerable emphasis and resources into the provision of convention centres, waterfront redevelopments, restaurant and entertainment districts, sports facilities and art museums, high-quality public spaces. Behind the scenes efforts are made to police key locales frequented by business executives and workers, to ensure tax breaks and special planning regulations for office locations, to connect the city with electronic networks. City managers look to create spectacles in order to brand cities as cultural or sporting capitals, and to bed down the success of the imagemaking through the contract of top-flight architects and iconic buildings (King, 2004). In South African cities the attempt to achieve global city status has been simultaneous with a refashioning of local government in a democratic post-Apartheid country and the introduction of market-oriented economic reforms. The opening of South Africa created at least three immediate global city contenders, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban but also the pressure on local government to approach these cities from the viewpoint of local self-reliance, empowerment, participation, local cooperation, sustainability and equity which seem inimical to global cities elsewhere. According to Glen Robbins, Chair of the Economic Development and Planning Standing Committee for Durban, It is our intention to build a globally competitive region in which all communities benefit from economic growth Reforms aimed to create uni-city authorities by reducing the 843 municipalities to 284 Johannesburg had 13 municipalities which now became a Metro government to attain critical mass (budget, personnel) and promote cross-subsidy. Governments began to formulate long-term visions the Johannesburg programme is called 2030 as well as more immediate interventions such as an international convention centre (site of the 2002 Earth Summit), a casino complex, Constitution Hill Supreme Court and Apartheid museum; the Blue IQ smart province initiative (a mix of technology, manufacturing and consumption projects); Gautrain rapid transit (to airport) and twinning initiatives with 39 cities. In Cape Town a central City partnership has spent 300 million regenerating the downtown and a further 150 million on the waterfront plus a convention centre. Durban has broken ground on The Point Waterfront which includes a Sea-World and formed a Development, Investment and Promotion Agency to attract national and global capital.
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None of these initiatives or others have managed to bring significance into the townships, some interesting empowerment projects for youth training and micro-enterprise support aside. The second refinement to the world city idea forwarded by Friedmann and Wolff found in the global city idea of Sassen is the attention to the consequences of globalisation for the internal structure and working of the city. According to Sassen the global city is a post-industrial production site whereby the urban manufacturing economy has fallen into decline and workers have moved into service-dominated employment. This shift, Sassen argues, has led to a new, highly-exclusionary dynamic, whereby the main impact on social order is the polarisation of wages and a new pattern of labour relations with the informalisation and casualisation of jobs. Within Global Cities we can witness New Inequalities, notably the growth of the informal economy; high income commercial and residential gentrification; and a sharp rise in homelessness. These features are produced by an increase in polarisation as transnational business practices reward financial service and producer service employees, and require a flexible out-sourced support economy of office workers and cleaners, food preparation, drivers and gophers, construction workers, nannies, and domestic helps. As Mollenkopf and Castells observe:
the tendency toward cultural, economic and political polarisation in New York takes the form of a contrast between a comparatively cohesive core of professionals in the advanced corporate services and a disorganised periphery fragmented by race, ethnicity, gender, occupational and industrial location, and the spaces they occupy. (1991, p.402)

In the global city therefore residential space is increasingly occupied by a growing urban elite and the infrastructure of shops and services required to provide for them, populated by a growing number of immigrant communities containing various sub-economies and a growing mass of poor (Sassen, 2001). The liberalisation of economies and processes of globalisation have been identified with increasing income inequality (see Figure 10.1). As indicated by Branco Milanovic (2005), inequality as captured by the Gini Coefficient has risen despite improvements to inequality in some countries (such as India), in large part because of rising inequality in many developed countries. Paul Krugman (2002) has written with some disdain that the pay of the top 100 Chief Executives has increased from 39 times to over 1,000 times the pay of an ordinary worker. These fat cats have managed to devise numerous ways to increase their income and wealth, through pension, hedge funds and tax havens (Beaverstock et al., 2004). As Hamnett (2005) has argued, however, polarisation must not be confused with professionalisation of certain sectors of the economy. According to Hamnett, moreover, polarisation will depend on the existence of a welfare state that is able to put in place a variety of catch-nets and uphold worker rights, as in Europe compared to the US.

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0.7

Gini Index

0.6

0.5

0.4 1950 1952 1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 Year

World unweighted

World population-weighted

World weighted except China

Figure 10.1: Income inequality 19502000 (Source: Milanovic, 2005)

Sassen argues that there is a direct intimate relationship between the global master of the universe in an office in Midtown Manhattan and the migrant food vendor on the street below. Unable to dedicate the time to the standard business lunch the executive now buys a burger or dog from the same place as the office worker, generating the polarisation in employment relations. While anecdotal, and easily countered by evidence that most firms buy in food from catering companies, which may use migrant informal labour, there is a sense of an informalising labour market in most large cities with a significant ethnic and frequently migrant component. At my university for example my office is cleaned by a Colombian, the coffee bar downstairs is staffed by an Ecuadorian, a South African and a Thai, my bus journey home passes an area known as Little Peru a complex of markets run by Peruvian, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Ghanaian and Jamaican traders. Home improvements in the area where I live are conducted by Polish and Latvian workers, only recently granted permission to enter the UK under EU expansion but unregistered for work. Friends who earn more than an academic have cleaners and nannies from Colombia, Hungary, Russia and Turkey. The economic success of global cities and their associated polarisation has added further impetus to the process of gentrification described in Chapter 8. Rising incomes have put pressure on housing markets forcing developers and households to look to older, dilapidated, parts of the city. Governments have responded by rezoning areas from light industrial or commercial to mixed and residential use, raising density limits and extending transport facilities. The cosmopolitan composition of the global city has also furthered gentrification. Workers in the key global sectors of finance and producer services (advertising, marketing, media) have been drawn to the distinction of inner city living, seeking out innovative space solutions in converted warehouse or industrial properties, old churches and cinemas, water towers, former utility and transport buildings (pump stations, engineeriums, sheds). Areas once considered marginal are now chic, supported by an array of restaurants, bars, galleries, gyms and clubs frequented by the yuppie (the young upwardly mobile professional), the buppie (black yuppie), the DINKIs (dual income no kids), to the SITKOM (Single Income Two/Three Kids/overbearing mortgage), to the selfexplanatory Flexecs. Displaced are the poorer, often ethnic, households who rented (Hamnett, 2005). Increasingly, however, gentrification is no longer enough. Polarisation has brought with it a deeper form of gentrified landscape in the urban enclave, with private regulations for entry through neighbourhood association requirements on floor area, build quality, maintenance, payment of fees,
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and even the controlled use of vehicles, swimming pools, tennis courts, barbecues, ownership of pets, but above all of security in the form of electronic surveillance, security firms and fast-reaction policing. Gated communities are not new phenomena, but they are a growing feature of many cities. In the United States, by 1997 there were about 19,000 gated communities housing 8.5 million people, with 40 per cent or more of new developments in cities such as Los Angeles being located behind walls. Blakely and Snyder (c.1999) suggest a three-fold typology: lifestyle communities meet demands for leisure; prestige communities meet the concerns for property values and privacy as a sign of status; and security communities provide refuge from the feelings of fear in the contemporary city. To most observers, these developments represent a wider privatisation of public spaces indicated by a growing provision of leisure and religious facilities, medical centres and schools, and a desire toward the privatised management of services such as gardening and maintenance that were previously patron organised, leaving the streets to the poor, the marginalised and the homeless (Marcuse, 1997). The global city seems to encourage the use of what architects refer to as defensive design and militaristic imagery (developments and apartments referred to as towers, castles), leading observers such as Mike Davis to consider whether for cities such as Los Angeles we are witness to a new urban apartheid (1990, pp.22627).

Critique
The world and global city idea has not been without its critics. These principally fall into two categories. First, that the global city framework lacks precision. As Markusen (1999) argues:
As a result of this fuzziness, the labelling of cities as world will vary depending on the connotation intended. For instance, if it is a citys key role in international transactions, broadly constructed, that matters, surely Washington DC counts as a world city, since it is the hub of the international security system and the site of the World Bank, IMF, Federal ReserveGeneva might also be included in the group under such a definition, as might Silicon Valley as a nexus of world cybernetic innovation. If it is the external orientation of a citys economy that matters, cities like Hong Kong and Singapore, would fit neatly into a club with New York. If is the dominance of a large national economy, and control over its relations with international community, cities such as Beijing, Mexico City and Moscow would surely belong. (1999, p.875)

This fuzziness problem is extended by studies focussing on issues related to the image, power and prestige of the global city, which often rely on declarations made by city mayors and commentators. Many analyses lack a thorough appreciation of the political economy of urban change over the past 20 years. While many cities have experienced a decline of traditional manufacturing, the shift has not been uniform across all sectors with some areas of manufacturing, successfully adjusting to the new economic environment through increases in productivity or development of new niche markets. Yet attempts to add more objective criteria, as indicated in Table 10.1, tend to result in simplistic typologies rather than understanding process and network. One approach that does still stress process has suggested that cities are not the appropriate spatial scale to understand globalisation. Rather, we should consider the advanced
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services such as an international airport, satellite-telecommunication systems, luxury hotels and government offices capable of providing information and infrastructure to back up international investors that are provided at a regional centre level (Borja and Castells, 1997). The second critique is perhaps even more provocative and emerges from a simple and clearly geographic set of questions: is globalisation taking place; what form is globalisation taking; does globalisation produce identifiable and consistent urban processes and patterns; why do we expect these processes to act similarly across the world? While most observers assume or argue that globalisation is real, others have expressed some doubt, and certainly as to the timing and nature of the change. As Mann warns:
We must beware the more enthusiastic of the globalists and transnationalists. With little sense of history, they exaggerate the former strengths of nation-states; with little sense of global variety, they exaggerate their current decline; with little sense of their plurality they down-play inter-national relations we must distinguish a) differential impacts on different types of state in different regions; b) trends weakening and some trends strengthening nation-states; c) trends displacing national regulation to inter-national as well as to transnational networks; d) trends simultaneously strengthening nation-states and transnationalism. (1997, p.494)

Indeed while Harvey (2006) shows that globalisation has a specific history other texts make more vague associations between late twentieth century change and earlier events, usually the 1973 oil crisis, removal of the gold standard or 1982 debt crisis. The connectivity that lies at the centre of globalisation is usually illustrated through data on financial (capital) or trade transactions, or information technology, which are beyond the purview of nation-state governments and dominated by multinationals. Indeed, multinationals have become more predominant, rising in number from 7,000 in 1970, 35,000 in 1994 to 63,000 in 2000, just 100 of which control 4050 per cent of world trade. About 25 per cent of this MNC world trade is with the US alone and in the sectors typically associated with the label global about 85 per cent of trade is within the developed world. Is that a global economy? Looking further at data provided by the World Bank, we can see that developing country involvement in trade has declined, China apart, over the past 20 years. Developing countries share of trade fell by one-half from 1980 to 1997, and while developing countries capture of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has grown dramatically since the late 1980s, around four-fifths of that flow involves just 15 emerging markets. Mexico, for example, receives about $22 billion per annum, while the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa receives less than two per cent of global FDI. Similar asymmetries, or indeed exclusion, are manifest for IT with 90 per cent of those online located in developed countries and 80 per cent of sites in English (World Bank, 2001, pp.30608). Two other characteristics are also evident, namely that for many developing countries there has been no process of economic growth accompanied by de-industrialisation in the past two decades, and while polarisation has got worse it was already extremely high. So, how do we understand cities in developing countries within the global city framework?

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Box 10.1 The globalisation of Mexico City? By most assessments Mexico City has not achieved global city status but tends to be downgraded to beta or relay node. Yet, with So Paulo, Buenos Aires and Caracas, it performs an important regional command and control centre function for global financial and corporate capital. Indeed, by some measures, Mexico City is the most globalised city in the developing world. A survey of banking and financial firms found that Mexico City registered 18 firms with links to London compared to 36 firms in New York and 29 in Hong Kong, and more than Los Angeles (16), Dublin (15), Toronto (15) or Geneva (14). There is a 93 per cent probability that a global firm located in London has a direct link to another of the firms branches in Mexico City. Only New York and Tokyo show a higher probability. Mexico Citys economy is increasingly reliant upon the financial sector: an increased share of the citys GDP from 10.3 per cent in 1970 to 23 per cent in 1998. Mexico City is the conduit for over 60 per cent of FDI into Mexico and contains almost one-half of the headquarters of Mexicos top 500 firms, almost two-thirds of the headquarters of foreigndominated firms, and four-fifths of the top 100 firms. In 1980, of the largest 25 firms, 19 were located in the Metropolitan area of Mexico City (MCZM) but only three were foreign owned; by 2000, 17 were in the MCZM and all but one were foreign. Mexico City has a transnational labour force of North American, European and Japanese employees and is a base for Mexicans who work in Chicago, Dallas, London or New York. The urban landscape is increasingly dominated by foreign banks, hotel chains, shopping malls with global brand products, Sushi restaurants serving private security firms and gentrified neighbourhoods. The Santa Fe megaproject on the site of a rubbish dump is home to multinational companies such as Daimler Chrysler, Hewlett Packard, Erickson, and ABN Amro, a 300-store shopping mall, private schools and universities, hospitals, high-end gated communities and apartment buildings. Nevertheless, while the USMexico border has become increasingly important for exportbased manufacturing, Mexico City still retains a dominant position in manufacturing. While manufacturing as a proportion of GDP fell for both Mexico City and the metropolitan region during the 1980s, from 1993 the sector has grown at an annual rate of three per cent. Employment, however, cut back by one-half and real incomes are less than in 1984. Box 10.2 Lagos Alaba Market
(Source: Koolhaas, 2001)

Koolhaas reports that in 1978 Alaba International Electronics Market was removed from Lagos and dumped on an area of swampy land. By 2000 Alaba had 50,000 traders and an annual turnover of $2 billion. While categorised by some as informal, Alaba accounts for 75 per cent of West Africas electronics trade, the largest electronics market in Africa and a key location in the transhipment of electric parts from the Middle East and South East Asia. About 50 per cent of the merchandise is bought from clearing houses in the Middle East, Europe and Asia, some of which is then broken up and stripped for parts, refurbished and sold on to Kenya. The market skyline is covered with telephone masts to talk with suppliers in Singapore, London and Dubai, shippers, financial agents and clients around the world. A network of scouts travel the world, to similar electrics markets in Moscow, Mexico City and Taipei, checking on new models, prices, business methods and firms wishing to sell inventory to avoid bankruptcy. Within Alaba there are churches, banks, electricity generation, its own security service, taxation and government. Committees supervise traders, ensuring that fake produce is limited, fees are paid and justice is meted out for petty crime. Alaba is a self-governing area within Lagos, not on many maps of global cities, but is as intimately networked into the world economy as most banks, advertising agencies or real-estate operators.

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As Robinson (2002) has observed in an interesting critique of the global city debate, little has been said about how cities in developing countries should be included in discussion. The economism of the global city criteria for qualification as a global city ignores interesting cases of cities establishing links across the world. The conventional reading is outlined in Box 10.1 and could be repeated for Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, So Paulo, Istanbul, Tunis and Bombay. The other reading is that offered for Lagos by Rem Koolhaas and presented in Box 10.2. If globalisation and global cities are justified principally according to the networks of trade and production circuits, even in the midst of industrial decline, then cities such as Lagos, Johannesburg, Tangier and Calcutta could be considered just as global as other, more obvious candidates. Activity 10.1 Many cities aspire to the status of global city. With reference to either the city where you live or your national capital consider how that city has or might orient urban policy to become more global. Consider policy here to mean economic, social, political and cultural. What groups and areas of the city would appear to benefit most from a global approach, and which groups and areas would appear to lose out?

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: discuss the concepts of World and Global cities, and the differences between them critique the idea of the Global City.

Sample examination question

Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of categorisation cities according to a World or Global city status.

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Notes

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Section 5: Global interactions

Section 5: Global interactions

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Notes

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Chapter 11: Geographies of development

Chapter 11: Geographies of development

Essential reading
Power, M. Alternative Geographies of Global Development and Inequality, in Daniels, P . et al. (eds) An Introduction to Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008). Radcliffe, S. Rethinking Development, in Cloke, P . et al. (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Slater, D. Trajectories of Development Theory: Capitalism, Socialism and Beyond, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Willis, K. Theories of Development, in Cloke, P . et al. (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005).

You may also like to refer to the subject guide for 109 Geographies of development.

Further reading
Corbridge, S. Beneath the pavement only soil: the poverty of post development, Journal of Development Studies, 34(1) 1998, pp.13848. Corbridge, S. Third World Debt, in Desai, V . and R. Potter The Companion to Development Studies. (London: Hodder Education, 2007) pp.47780. Easterly, W. How did Heavily Indebted Poor Countries become Heavily Indebted? Reviewing two decades of debt relief, World Development, 30(10) 2002, pp.167796. Edwards, M. The irrelevance of development studies, Third World Quarterly, (11) 1989, pp.11635. Escobar, A. Encountering Development: the Making and Unmaking of the Third World. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Gilbert A.G. The urban revolution, in Gwynne, R.N. and C. Kay (eds) Latin America transformed. (Harlow: Hodder Arnold, 2004) pp.93116. Hart, G. Development critiques in the 1990s: Culs De Sac and Promising Paths, Progress in Human Geography, (25) 2001, pp.60514. Lawson, V . Making Development Geography. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2007). Lehmann, D. An Opportunity Lost: Escobars Deconstruction of Development, Journal of Development Studies, 33(4) 1997, pp.56878. Rostow, W.W. The take-off into self-sustained growth, Economic Journal, 1956, pp.2548. Sen, A. Food and Freedom, World Development, (17) 1989, pp.76981. Sen, A. Democracy as a Universal Value, Journal of Democracy, 10 (3) 1999, pp.317. Shidharan, K. G-15 and SouthSouth Cooperation: Promise and Performance, Third World Quarterly, 19(3) 1998, pp.35773. Sylvester, C. Development Studies and Postcolonial Studies: Disparate Tales of the Third World, Third World Quarterly, 20(4) 1999, pp.70321. Taylor, I. Advice is Judged by Results, Not by Intentions: Why Gordon Brown is Wrong about Africa, International Affairs, 81(2) 2005, pp.299310. White, E. Kwame Nkrumah: Cold War Modernity, Pan African Ideology and The Geopolitics of Development, Geopolitics, 8(2) 2003, pp.99124.

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Aims of the chapter

This chapter considers the idea of development, and how this idea created the division between what we identify as the developing and developed worlds. We will consider how this distinction related to the Cold War distinction between East and West, socialist and capitalist. The chapter will consider the achievements of development as a process, within its own terms, and present a number of critiques of development as an idea or discourse.

Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: discuss the origins of terms such as underdeveloped and development critically evaluate how development became a mainstream initiative in the midlate twentieth century evaluate whether development can be judged a success in its own terms identify a number of critiques of development as a practice and an idea.

The invention of development and the underdeveloped world

We deal in this chapter with what Gillian Hart (2001) has called Big D development, the intent of institutions and agents to promote and analyse a specific series of reforms and interventions. A useful starting point to understanding this idea is to consider how D development emerged from the post-1945 need for political stability and a positive vision of the future. It was already apparent to most observers by 1944 that the Second World War, at least in Europe, would be won by the Allies, and also that the United States would determine the nature of the peace that followed. In what became known as the Pax Americana (approximately 19441973) the United States foreign policy followed a form of benign internationalism wherein American interests were subordinated to the wider demands of Peace (including through the Cold War), Reconstruction and Development. According to this version of history there are two key moments, both of which form the basis to the late twentieth-century idea of development and a space that we call the developing world.1 The first moment was the articulation of The Truman Doctrine that set out the US view of peace through stability. The Doctrine emerged from a speech made to Congress in 1947 by President Truman (for full address see www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/truman.htm). Superficially, the speech concerned the fate of the Greek Government and was based on the observation that within Europe there was no country capable of defending weaker countries (symbolised by Greece) from USSR (symbolised by incursion from Yugoslavia). Britain, which had funded Greeces reconstruction, was in financial difficulty and the US was the only country capable of assistance. Moreover, it was clear to Truman that if Britain could not support Greece then it could not protect anywhere else (symbolised by Turkey):
[I]f Greece should fall under the control of an armed minority, the effect upon its neighbour, Turkey, would be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder might spread throughout the 188

1 For simplicity this chapter avoids using other terms such as South, although this is my personal preference, and will avoid using terms such as Third World as derogatory and especially misleading in the absence of a Second (socialist) bloc post-1989.

Chapter 11: Geographies of development entire Middle East. Moreover, the disappearance of Greece as an independent state would have a profound effect upon those countries in Europe whose peoples are struggling against great difficulties to maintain their freedoms

At stake then was whether countries were able to choose between alternative ways of life and the consequences for others of making poor choices. As Truman expressed it:
[T]he seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive. The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own Nation.

The Doctrine then asserts the need to build a system based on mutual responsibility, and influenced by the ideas of George Kennan (see Chapter 5), recognises the imperative of containing communism and promoting freedom from empire. The speech therefore ends with a request for $400 million economic aid to Greece and Turkey as well as authorisation of military intervention. Henceforth the US would become interventionist beyond Latin America and the Caribbean, and would use a combination of economic tools and military persuasion to ensure that countries made appropriate choices to prevent totalitarianism (especially communism) taking hold. The second moment can also be traced to a speech on 20 January 1949 by President Truman, and is known as the Four Point Plan. The Plan itself is something of a misnomer as it provides retrospective US endorsement for a series of up-and-running actions. In Points 1 to 3 Truman gives US support to the establishment of the UN. The Charter for the UN was agreed in 1945 with all states renouncing the use of war and hence respecting political boundaries, pledging continuity of the Marshall Plan for Europe (1947) and the formation of NATO. The fourth Point was, allegedly, a lastminute addition, some claiming it was even added to the speech on the journey from the White House to Capitol Hill. Point Four set out a vision of development in a post-war, but more importantly, post-colonial world. Truman set up what geographers call a territoriality of the Third World not a real place but a space identified (bounded) in order to secure a particular outcome. Point Four then introduces the term underdeveloped areas. While, as Gustavo Esteva (1992) was later to complain, two billion people woke up one morning to find themselves underdeveloped, the term is recognised by most as an improvement on colonies, backward or primitive. The Plan goes on to associate an idea of change for these areas through a loose association of technological change, economic growth and democracy. Asserting an idea that economic growth and social improvement are natural, endogenous and linear, there is also a call that, as large parts of the world are clearly not economically and socially well-off, there must be constraints holding these areas back. Truman hints at the need for trade to become freer, for cultures to enable change, and for education to instil missing values and norms. Implicit in the Plans narrative is the idea of an evolution, that underdevelopment is somehow before development, and it was therefore imperative for underdeveloped areas to learn the normative lessons for change from the developed. While we can trace these ideas to Adam Smith and especially John Stuart Mill, and the influence in dualism/ stage models of Arthur Lewis and Hollis Chenery, while the first journal of
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development studies is called Economic Development and Cultural Change, Point Four gave legitimacy to the ideas of modernisation through economic development that we associate with Walt W. Rostow and to the formation of the Bretton Woods institutions. The Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, now part of the World Bank group) were set up in 1944 to guard the world economy against the competitive devaluations that had plagued capitalism in the 1930s, and which had contributed to the outbreak of the Second World War. The Bretton Woods Treaty had its origins in a decision taken in December 1941 by Secretary of State Hans Morgenthau who instructed his Under-Secretary, Harry Dexter White, to draw up a blueprint for the international currency arrangements that should follow the war. Morgenthau and White saw the need for a system for the production and circulation of money that would avoid the inflation that hit 1920s Germany (too much money) and the 1930s depression (too little money). White realised that in a post-war world it would be the responsibility of the US to pump liquidity into the international economy, hence the Marshall programme that devoted 13 billion to Europe from 1948 to 1952. White and Maynard Keynes favoured a system based on statebacked (fiduciary) monies rather than gold which was difficult to manage. But whereas Keynes pressed for a truly World Bank which would issue its own currency (bancor), the US pressed for the US dollar to function as the worlds principal reserve currency. The IMF grew out of Whites ideas for a stabilisation fund that would be contributed to by its members in the ratio of 25 per cent gold and 75 per cent national currency, the principal reserve currency was the US dollar pegged to gold at the rate of $35 = one ounce of gold with all other currencies pegged to the US dollar, with permissions for major revaluations to be sought from the IMF. As observed by Benjamin Cohen (1977), At bottom, the Bretton Woods system rested on one simple assumption that economic policy in the United States would be stabilising. Given that the US economy had doubled in GDP terms during the Second World War and with Isaiah Bowmans influence on President Roosevelt evident in the idea of economic lebensraum, this did indeed seem a reasonable assumption. Alan Hughes saw the 1940s to 1960s as the Golden Age of Capitalism marked by low inflation, low unemployment, high rates of economic growth and currency stability. But there are at least three caveats. First, currency control through the Bretton Woods institutions was inherently unstable. As economist Robert Triffin points out, Bretton Woods required the US to supply dollars into the world economy to ensure the better circulation of goods and services, while it required the US to maintain a fixed dollargold exchange rate. That condition, in turn, assumed economic growth in the US with a balanced budget and limited flows of transnational capital between countries. Second, Bretton Woods assumed that US foreign policy would retain a benign internationalist quality. Yet, by the early 1960s the US began to close the gold window, the right of economic agents to demand gold from the US at the agreed rate. Countries favoured by the US gained better access than those over whom it wanted leverage. In addition, as the costs of the war in Vietnam escalated the US wanted to run a payments deficit but found that it held insufficient gold, blaming some European countries of hoarding. On 15 August 1971, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window and by 1973 the system of fixed exchange rates that it supported had been replaced by a system of floating exchange rates. The death
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knell between these two dates was the de-territorialisation of money: fiduciary control passed from nation-states to other institutions, principally banks, that began to issue their own forms of currency, Eurodollars, Xenocurrencies and Petrodollars mostly through the Eurobanking system to middle-income countries being the most important. The third caveat concerns whether Bretton Woods served its purpose in assisting underdeveloped areas. Here, we must look to the more specific routemap offered by Walt W. Rostow whose work, derived from an understanding of the historical development of the West, suggested a sequence of measures to be taken to achieve development (Box 11.1). Box 11.1 The stages to growth 1. Traditional society, characterised by an agricultural peasant economy, low productivity, unchanging production methods and low investment only enough to maintain, not to create growth (Rostow, 1956, p.27). 2. Pre-take-off society, economic prerequisites for take-off are created during this stage: including to political structure and shift from culture where traditional values hinder economic growth to one of entrepreneurealism. 3. Take-off, the defining moment of development subsequent economic growth becomes automatic as high growth manufacturing sectors established. 4. Road to maturity, sustained economic progress. 5. Mass consumption, industrial society, defined specifically in terms of the amount of goods people buy. (Source: Rostow, W.W. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, 1960.) Here Rostow outlines that the problem of underdevelopment was not caused by colonialism, in that colonialism he claimed brought net positive investment flows and the implementation of rational government. Underdevelopment originates in pre-colonial conditions whereas colonial indicates how these might be changed and need to go further. In particular, Rostow addressed a series of the missing elements between underdeveloped and developed economies. His focus was on investment, noting that in Stage 3 it was necessary for the amount of national income that is saved or invested to increase from five per cent to over 10 per cent (Rostow, 1956, p.32). However, he was sceptical that left to its own devices economies, as neoclassical theory would suggest, were capable of pushing to development if the other requisites of development were lacking. Rostow argued then for a developmental state that could gain ideas from outside of society and induce change with a sharp stimulus such as a political revolution (in some writing Rostow is quite complementary to Russia and China). While a Keynesian not a statist, Rostow urged support for science:
there is an important initial agreement among us allthat modern economic growth, at its core, consists in the progressive generation and diffusion of new technologies linked, in one way or another, to the prior building up of the stock of basic science. (Rostow, 1978)

and a middle-class. Such prioritisation has clear US-overtones, a point probably not lost on Rostow who regarded the idea of other countries following the Stages being good for the US. As he put it:
For Americans the reward of victory will be simply this: to allow our society to continue to develop according to the old human 191

09 Human geography lines which hark back to our birth as a nationWe struggle to keep in the world scenario an environment which allows an open society like ours to survive and flourish.

As Rostows later career as National Security adviser to President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam war would attest he was alive to the geopolitics of development a topic to which we return later, but for now let us consider two litmus tests for the Truman-modernisation idea of Development.

Litmus test I
Rostows Stages underscore the idea of an evolutionary path along which development can be measured, and with the highest stage unequivocally associated with the US. This is an important point to understanding the definition of the difference between developed and developing countries. At this point, there was little concern for poverty. Indeed, although Rostow is often associated with the idea of trickle down, that development would alleviate poverty and equity, most development thinking displays little concern for the distribution of benefits until the 1960s takes a more spatial stance and basic needs is adopted in the 1970s. In the meantime an unspoken faith is placed in the idea that capitalism is benevolent to all. It is from a Rostow-type perspective of stages with identifiable indicators, and principally GDP , investment and consumption, that World Bank tables are derived. First, let us look at the input side of the development record. What have developed countries done to assist development elsewhere? Table 11.1 shows the number of loans from the World Bank by region and sector for the period 1960 to 1975, a moment of high-achievement in development terms. The table shows that the Bank retained a remarkably high presence in Europe, indeed it provided over twice as many loans to Europe over this period than to the Middle East and was making more loans for industry at end of the period compared to the beginning. Table 11.1 also shows the favoured status afforded to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) which tops the chart for every category except industry. For most of the period countries in Latin America, and part of the Caribbean, were not democratic. Middle East 11 4 14 6 3 13 2 4

Africa Agriculture Education Industry Power Telecommunications Transportation Water/Sewerage Other

(Source: Lawson, 2007)

Asia 37 12 48 35 10 57 10 7

Europe 16 8 34 28 1 24 7 1

LAC 58 22 24 64 15 70 15 9

51 12 34 30 10 56 9 12

Table 11.1: Number of World Bank loans 19601975 by region

In part, the uneven record of development is because of the debt crisis, and part of the explanation to the incisive impacts of the crisis was because of the changing role of the Bretton Woods institutions. Although Rostow preferred investment capital to be sourced domestically,
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developing countries were encouraged to go to international markets from the 1970s, to take up dollar-denominated loans at interest rates below domestic rates and inflation, to be repaid after five to seven years. But the US and European countries countered inflation by raising interest rates, from nine per cent in 1979 to 17 per cent in 1981, raising the cost of existing debt and attracting capital from potential lenders to developing countries. Developing countries were therefore hit with more expensive debt, a liquidity crisis as new loans dried up. The IMF, encouraged by Whites original formulation to be tougher on deficit countries than surplus ones, introduced Structural Adjustment measures as a condition of currency stabilisation loans. The impacts on developing countries, and especially the poor, were dramatic:
the patient has gone into a deep coma as a result of the cure. Economies are everywhere contracting, employment opportunities shrinking; investment is next to nil, growth a dim hopeOnce theyve cut the fat, they start depleting muscle and bone. (George, 1988, pp.5759)

The pain of the remedy, even for insiders such as Michael Camdessus, appeared to outweigh the scale of the initial problem. In his 1999 resignation speech, Camdessus noted:
As IMF Director, I obliged those countries seeking our help to submit to major macro-economic surgery when six aspirins would have brought the same results.

While not all observers agree on the causes or remedy for the debt crisis (see www.brettonwoodsproject.org and Easterly, 2002) the crisis did show that while endogenous growth was fine in theory, in practice countries had come to rely on international financial institutions. In turn it indicated that many of the institutions established to promote economic growth and stability were primarily concerned with policing stability than with meeting the welfare needs of the poor (Corbridge, 2007). Since the bleak days of debt restructuring of the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, a greater emphasis on conditional debt relief has been installed. The Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative has reduced debt repayment for 27 countries by approximately $54 billion, on condition that the monies no longer required for debt servicing go to welfare programmes. From 2005 to 2010 a further $40 billion of relief is expected. Even so, Sub-Saharan African countries will still possess a debt burden of over one trillion dollars. Development assistance from developed countries has also returned to the international agenda. Despite commitments dating at least as far back as the UN General Assembly in 1970 to raise the Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) target to 0.7 per cent of GNP , the average currently stands at less than one-half that figure but is rising. Of the 22 member states of the OECD ODA disbursement in 2005 was just over $100 billion, double the figure for 1995. Approximately $23 billion of the $100 billion however was debt relief, $14 billion of which was for Iraq, plus further substantial amounts for post-Tsunami work and reconstruction in Afghanistan. Some countries, however, continue to devote very low proportions of GDP to ODA (Table 11.2). The United States net ODA in 2005 was US$ 27.5 billion, a rise of 35.6 per cent in real terms, but only 0.22 per cent of GDP . The European Union is set to raise ODA to about $44 billion per annum with current commitments from the 15 richest states equivalent to 0.51 per cent of GDP and 0.17 per cent for the less well-off member states. Delivery of ODA has also seen a shift. First, about
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70 per cent of ODA from the European Union will be managed by NGOs rather than recipient national governments. Second, whereas in the past countries with 70 per cent of the worlds poor received only 25 per cent of ODA, the new EU agreements and US disbursements will target over onehalf of ODA to Africa. Total ($ Millions) Australia Denmark France Germany Japan Netherlands Norway Portugal * Spain United Kingdom United States 1,666 2,107 10,059 9,915 13,101 5,131 2,775 365 3,123 10,754 27,457 Total Of Which, Percentage ODA ODA as Debt Relief Change 200405 Percentage Grants (excl. debt relief) of GDP 9 20 3,199 3,573 3,553 410 25 3 498 3,699 4,073 6.1 0.8 0.0 9.8 12.1 16.6 12.6 65.1 13.7 1.7 16.2 0.25 0.81 0.47 0.35 0.28 0.82 0.93 0.21 0.29 0.48 0.22

Table 11.2: Overseas development assistance, selected OECD members, 2005. *Note: the dramatic decline in Portugals ODA was because of a large dispersal of ODA for the reconstruction of Angola in 200304. (Source: OECD, 2005)

Have the development policies of development countries and the assistance from the developed made a difference to poverty, human development and equality? Again, the picture is mixed. Spectacular rates of economic growth in China and India apart, growth in most developing countries since 1982 has been lower than in the 1960s, recording negative growth for some of the 1980s and positive but low levels of growth in the 1990s. Poverty, however, whether measured at the US$1.08 a day definition of poor or the less than US$2 per day extremely poor has improved. The number of people in extreme poverty was over one billion in 1995, an increase from 800 million in 1985, and 2.8 billion people are living on less than $2 per day (World Bank 2000/2001 Development Report). Indeed, data suggest that about 70 countries recorded no increase in per capita income from 1980 to 2000, and 45 countries had a lower per capita income in the mid-1990s than in 1970. Leading some observers to use terms such as Fourth World or Poorest of the Poor the scale of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa was as great in the mid-1990s as in the mid1960s. Even in Latin America, however, which has higher levels for most development indicators than other developing country regions and where economic growth returned by the early 1990s, data on the proportion of the population living below a poverty line show that whereas in 1970 about 40 per cent of the population was poor, in 1990 the figure was 48 per cent and by 1999 there had been a modest decline to 44 per cent (Gilbert, 2004). As might be expected given that economic growth has increased in the past decade but poverty has shown little or no improvement, inequality has changed only marginally for the better or not at all. Over the past decade the proportion of people in Latin American countries that earn less than one-half of average income has increased. In Brazil, for example,
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whereas 39 per cent people in 1990 earned one-half or less of average income, by 1999 the percentage was 44. In Chile, regarded by many as a successful case of economic reform, 54 and 55 per cent of the population in 1990 and 2000 earn less than one-half average income, and in Costa Rica, a country with a long-standing commitment to human welfare the percentages are 32 and 36 (Gilbert, 2004). The shape of poverty, in both Latin America and elsewhere, tends to suggest an urbanisation of poverty whereby a relatively constant percentage of the rural population lives in poverty as 40 years ago whereas the percentage of the urban population in poverty has increased as has the percentage of the total population that is defined as urban. Seen from a global perspective, average income in the richest 20 countries is equivalent to 37 times the average of the poorest; the bottom 20 per cent of the worlds population by 2000 commanding one-half the percentage of global income they claimed in 1960, about one per cent. This gap between richest and poorest has doubled in the past 40 years. By the end of the 1990s, therefore, it was possible to claim that the assets of the worlds 200 richest people are greater than the combined income of 41 per cent of the worlds people. Compared to the 1970s when it was often shown that leading MNCs were larger individually than almost any developing country, by 2000 it was said that if just one per cent of the wealth of the 200 richest people could fund primary education for a year. More generally, the US alone spends four times more on golf than the UN estimates is required in order to provide basic sanitation to developing countries. An awareness of developments failure to improve basic living conditions for many and close the gap between rich and poor has informed a series of new initiatives in recent years. The UN Social Summit of 1996 agreed a series of International Development Targets (IDTs) that have since become the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed by 189 countries in 2000 (www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm). The MDGs are structured around eight Goals, covering income poverty, health, education, child mortality and gender, with 18 specific targets set to cover the realisation of the Goals (Table 11.3). In turn progress toward reaching the Targets is to be monitored through data collection on 48 indicators (not shown but see www.oecd.org). The MDGs are complemented by uni-, bi- and multi-lateral initiatives such as the HIPC and The Commission for Africa (www.commissionforafrica.org), as well as a greater targeting to poor groups by regional development banks. So far, progress toward the realisation of the MDGs appears to have been slow, and the attention to indicator-driven policy has not been without controversy (see Taylor, 2005). One controversy is whether the MDGs put too little emphasis on social and human rights, and to democracy, and rely on traditional methods of development delivery through ODA. The concern of some observers is that the MDGs represent poverty as the absence development, measured as income and basic welfare, rather than as the UNDP conceived it in 1998:
Poverty is the denial of various choices and opportunities basic to human development. These include the ability to lead a long, creative and healthy life, to acquire knowledge, to have freedom, dignity, self-respect and respect for others, and to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living. (UNDP , 1998)

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Goals 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Targets 1. Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people with an income of less than $1 per day. 2. Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

2. Achieve universal primary education 3. Promote gender equality and empower women 4. Reduce child mortality 5. Improve maternal health 6. Combat HIV-AIDS, malaria and other diseases

3. Ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. 4. Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education by 2015. 5. Reduce by two-thirds between 1900 and 2015 the under-five mortality rate. 6. Reduce by three-quarters between 1990 and 2015 the maternal mortality rate. 7. Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV-AIDS. 8. Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

9. Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources. 10. Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. 11. By 2020 to have achieved significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.

8. Develop a global partnership for development

12. Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system: includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction both nationally and internationally. 13. Address the special needs of the least developed countries: includes tariff and quota free access for exports, HIPC and cancellation of bilateral debt, and more ODA for poverty reduction. 14. Address the special needs of landlocked countries and small island states. 15. Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term. 16. In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth. 17. In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries. 18. In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications.

Table 11.3: The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 196

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There is little scope in Table 11.3 for development as meaning something about creativity, freedom, dignity, self-esteem, security, love, creative potential, or how these might be strengthened. Nor is there an obvious concern with the equity of the development experience which the Human Development Indices (HDI) have shown for the past two decades to be strongly divided by ethnicity and race, as well as by age and gender. Finally, there is little association between the MDGs and other international commitments to, for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Litmus test II
A second test to development concerns the idea, forwarded by Truman, that the task ahead involved promoting development and democracy. At face value, democracy is generally regarded as good for development: governments should make better decisions if bad ones are penalised by the electorate. However, arguments against or at least an ambivalence to democracy emerged from the 1950s to 1980s. Rostow, for example, promoted the notion that democracy was a universal value: the democratic creed can easily be translated into the terms of other cultures: it is broadly speaking what most human beings would choose if the choice was theirs (1971, p.165). But, he also saw the need for some group in society [with] the will and the authority to install and diffuse new production techniques and argued that, it is clear that an enlargement and modernisation of Armed Forces could play the role of a leading sector in take-off. Observing that the social conditions for democracy (literacy, civic culture, middle class) were mostly absent in developing countries, Seymour Lipset suggested that these were not exclusive to democracy whereas they were exclusive to development. Indeed, he noted that it was possible to have premature democracy, for example in Thailand where the 1945 transition broke down in 1947, began again in 1949 only to collapse in 1951, unless development had reached a level to ensure these conditions. Thus, to Lipset it seemed clear that development is a requisite of democracy but democracy is not a requisite for development. The merit of a sequence of development then democracy seemed observable as a number of the more developed countries (circa 1950s) were not yet democratic (Thailand, Taiwan) whereas many democratic but not highly-developed countries could trace their transition to democracy to exogenous influence (the Second World War, external support from the US) and only the UK, Sweden and Switzerland, all highly developed, could claim democracy unlinked to decolonisation and due to internal political culture. The argument that democracy hindered development also emerged at this time, captured perhaps most succinctly two decades later by Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore who argued:
I do not believe that democracy necessarily leads to development. I believe that what a country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy. The exuberance of democracy leads to indiscipline and disorderly conduct which are inimical to development. (1992)

Authoritarian government became a regular feature of developing countries: from 1948 to 1967 144 of 147 irregular transfers of government were in developing countries. There was some empirical observation from Latin America that the military took over where sustaining growth became problematic and the middle class would not accept austerity: although Colombia endured 38 governments in 64 years without military overthrow to 1968. Bureaucratic authoritarian regimes as Guillermo ODonnell called them tended to stabilise the economy, at the expense of decompressing
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political freedom, but the record for most military governments was lower economic growth than the previous democratic civilian regimes (the principal exceptions being Bolivia and Ecuador). Although development was hardly failing in South-east Asia at the time, the fear that democracy would provoke populism rather than technocracy encouraged the World Bank and IMF to ignore the politics of a country, that is condoning lack of democracy if not actually encouraging authoritarianism. In offering support to authoritarian governments that had, as President Eisenhower put it, the potential to evolve into democratic governments, the Bretton Woods institutions were backed up by the US that equated strong and stable government with unity and national purpose during the Cold War. The Bretton Woods institutions, the US and most academics were therefore caught by surprise when democracy (re)emerged across the developing world just as during the 1980s development itself was faltering. By the early 1990s not only were previously democratic countries democracies once more across Latin America for example but countries with no or a weak democratic history had become democracies across Eastern Europe, South-east Asia and South Africa while longer-standing democracies deepened their commitment to competitive elections, for example in the case of India and Kenya. While concerns were rightly raised about the type of democracy on offer in many countries, Sen (1999) could argue that a fundamental shift had taken place. From a position in which certain peoples were thought incapable of governing themselves, and were therefore not fit for democracy, developing countries now expected to become fit through democracy. Democracy (and increasingly a positive human rights record) now became a condition to development assistance. As the UKs former Foreign Secretary (now Lord) Douglas Hurd put it in 1998, we will reward democratic governments and any political reform which leads to greater accountability and democracy. The corollary is that we should penalise particularly bad cases of repression and abuse of human rights. Indeed, against a meter of so-called developed countries the suffrage of many developing countries stood up quite well (Table 11.4) although indices of freedom reflect favourably on only about two-thirds of democracies (www.freedomhouse.org). Men New Zealand Australia France Germany US UK India South Africa Philippines Brazil Argentina Colombia 1879 1901 1848 1867 1870* 1918 1950 1994 1936 1889 1912 1853 Women 1893 1902 1944 1918 1920 1928 1950 1994 1937 1932 1947 1957 Gap 14 1 96 51 50 10 0 0 1 43 35 104

Table 11.4: Universal suffrage? Note: The distinction by gender ignores race 198

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The geopolitics of development: a first moment of refusal

So far I have presented the emergence of development as an adjunct to the ideological concerns of the United States. Rather than relying on Truman or Rostow, intellectuals from the non-West were among the most incisive in challenging the structures of exploitation that produced underdevelopment in the periphery, exposing the discursive and disciplinary structures of colonialism as a system of rule. Nationalist struggles as undertaken by Nkrumah (Ghana), Nasser (Egypt), Sukarno (Indonesia), Bourghiba (Tunisia) and Nyerere in Tanzania among many others promoted a Pan Third Worldism that gave rise to alternative development ambitions. Briefly, let us consider the contribution of three very different intellectuals/ activists whose imaginative geographies provided a critique of Western accounts of the non-West. The first is Raul Preibisch (19011986), an economist who questioned the validity of the idea of comparative advantage which according to David Ricardo said that under free market conditions countries would specialise in what they were best at and, as adapted by Paul Samuelson (1940), that incomes would equalise. To Preibisch comparative advantage seemed empirical nonsense in a world in which poverty was extensive and, in Latin America, the comparative advantage of trading in raw materials appeared not to be closing incomes with the North. To explain the failing of comparative advantage he went digging through historical data. He found that in the nineteenth century industrialisation in Europe had benefited peripheral economies which in turn could borrow from Europe to import goods. However, he noted that over time the terms of trade had got worse, and that as the US became more important (due to self-sufficiency in raw materials) the potential for any comparative advantage fell while a propensity to import goods would remain. In order to import countries would spend gold reserves. Preibisch argued that the US was embarked essentially on import-substitution; it protected itself from competition (echo Mackinder) and promoted exports. When the periphery could pay no more the US would prefer recession to revaluation as it could grow internally. Nor was Europe much better. Preibisch noted that trade unions would prevent wages falling, keeping the price of goods high and inducing recession abroad. Preibisch traced this argument back to Latin America, observing that between 1929 to 1933 purchasing power fell by six per cent as the US exported recession while pressures on liquidity in the US during the Second World War meant a shortage of dollars in the 1940s causing rising interest rates. Preibisch argued for industrialisation to break US monopolies in a system of healthy protection. Essentially scarce capital was better employed building up domestic industry, safeguarded behind protectionist tariffs and quotas, rather than being spent on imports. The process known as import-substitution (ISI) produced rapid industrialisation in the leading economies of Latin America from the 1940s to 1960s, at rates rarely witnessed since (Table 11.5), although ISI tended to rely on domestic oligopolies, high levels of state involvement and restrictive labour practices.

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Country Argentina Brazil Chile Colombia Mexico Peru Venezuela Latin America

195059 2.4 6.5 3.8 4.7 5.9 4.9 8.3 4.9

196069 4.4 6.2 4.5 5.0 7.1 5.6 5.4 5.7

197079 3.0 8.6 2.0 5.7 6.5 4.0 3.2 5.6

198089 0.6 2.9 3.2 3.7 2.1 0.2 0.8 1.7

199099 4.9 2.9 7.2 3.3 2.7 5.4 1.7 3.4

20002 5.5 2.4 3.1 1.8 2.5 2.6 0.2 1.2

Table 11.5: Economic growth in selected Latin American countries since 1950 (Annual growth in GDP) (Source: cited in Gilbert, 2004)

Although Preibisch was not of the political Left his ideas formed support for the Dependency School associated with the work of Andre Gunder Frank, Osvaldo Sunkel and Celso Furtado. Dependistas took Marxs proposition that capitalism was an improvement upon the timeless structures of pre-capitalism that it replaced, but that instead of refining an account of class exploitation the Dependistas were concerned by exploitation over space, by the core (metropole) over the periphery (satellite). To Frank colonialism had set out a process in which surplus value would always be siphoned off along what we would later think of as the commodity chain (see Chapter 12) to produce the development of underdevelopment. Cities and regions in developing countries could become more prosperous over time but only through the exploitation of their hinterlands (rural areas, smaller towns), and would always themselves be the subject of exploitation by the next scale up, the nation and eventually the metropole. In a pessimistic scenario therefore there would always be a development gap. Rather than seek to retain more of the surplus value in the developing countries, however, through industrialisation as Preibisch proposed, Frank and others advocated a more complete delink from the world system. A different view of development was proposed by Mahatma Gandhi (18691948) whose worldview was informed by religion and philosophy including the works of Tolstoy and Ruskin. Gandhis account of non-violent social revolution was based on the precept of decolonisation from within. Getting rid of the British from India was not enough; Indians had to reject the materialism of Western civilisation. Gandhi opposed what he called the privilege of greed over need, the mad desire to destroy distance and time. He famously declared that:
The Western civilisation which passes for civilisation is disgusting to meYou cannot build non-violence on a factory civilisation, but it can be built on self-contained villages. (From Hind Swaraj, 1908.)

Based on the idea of swadeshi (beauty, frugality and simplicity), the villages would be autarkic, independent of neighbours and related to others in a non-hierarchical manner. They would also have no plague or cholera, work but not so much luxury as to make men idle, and their aim will be to achieve happiness. We can see Gandhis influence in Schumachers Small is Beautiful (Chapter 6) and in the African socialism proposed by Julius Nyerere in Tanzania:

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Chapter 11: Geographies of development Both the rich and the poor individual were completely secure in African society. Natural catastrophe brought famine but it brought famine to everybody poor or rich. Nobody starved, either of food or of human dignity, because he lacked personal wealth. He could depend on the wealth possessed by the community of which he was a member. That was socialism. That is socialism. (Nyerere, 1968)

It is worth noting that this appeal to the simple village is not the same as the small-scale, rural-based, appropriate development that is often associated with China during the 1950s and 1960s. China, like India, based its development ambitions on industrialisation and the transfer of resources from the countryside to pay for modern development in the cities. Nature was subservient to man and machine, and the philosophical basis to village existence in China was undermined by the coercive power of the state. Thus, as Amartya Sen (1989) highlighted, while from 1949 to 1976 China achieved extraordinary positive freedoms (from hunger or illiteracy), its development was non-development in a deeper sense because of its failure to expand individual negative freedoms. The third intellectual is Frantz Fanon (19251961) who argued that the violence of colonialism had to be tackled by acts of counter violence by the wretched of the earth. Fanon regarded Western development as neo-colonial. It was a view at odds with a privileged childhood in Martinique where he read about the French Enlightenment, but formed having enlisted to join the French forces liberating North Africa where Fanon saw the effect of French colonialism. In Algeria he was treated as inferior, realising that the Enlightenment ideals were obsolete and only served to entrap the colonised to free the coloniser. It was a view confirmed when Fanon returned to Algeria in the 1950s to support the Front de Liberacion Nacionale against one million French troops who killed (officially) 141,000 Algerians and the same network of concentration camps that a decade earlier had been used to transport Jews and Roma to Auschwitz.2 Fanon was careful not to racialise a struggle that people such as Marcus Garvey regarded as Black Liberation. Fanon argued that seeing history through race only served to recreate present histories a view he ridiculed as Blacks dressing like Nazis and would not build a larger humanism. Instead of using the typologies of race that were a basis for colonialism (Chapter 2) that skin colour was linked to cultural values Fanon sought to reveal how representations of the coloniser and colonised, and not just about unequal economic exchanges between the two, was the basis to both colonialism and neo-colonialism. He suggested:
In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. This is why Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem. (1965, p.32)

Ironically, a Frenchman, Alfred Sauvy, coined the term Third World in 1952.

Fanon feared that the national leaders of liberation were mimic men who would replace the difference of colonialism for decalage (other differences), of city/country, between regions, in new exploitations. Fanons proposition was an international humanism in which the differences that structure the world (especially race) are broken down; indeed, they are ignored completely.

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The non-aligned movement

Fanons international humanism was never to be realised. Nationally, many of the post-colonial leaders dropped their alternative stance and adopted development strategies imported from the developed world, backed up by consumption tastes (including in modernist architectural grandeur) and divisions somewhat akin to Fanons mimic men (see White, 2003). Institutionally, however, a sense of developing countries political strength was becoming evident. After a series of false starts, such as the Asian Relations Conference organised by Prime Minister Nehru of India in 1947, a conference of leaders was organised in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. Bandung brought together delegates from 29 African and Asian countries. The opening address expressed the confidence of this move (Box 11.2). Bandung embraced the idea that developing countries could be united by their similar colonial histories, thereby bringing together countries from the Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanic and Lusophone worlds, and their difference from the developed world, to construct a political position of Non-Alignment, a term coined in 1961. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) challenged the EastWest Cold War geography bringing together countries networked in Cold War Alliances. Thus, Yugoslavia, Democratic Peoples Republic of Vietnam and China attended meetings at which members of SEATO such as Thailand and Pakistan were committed to guarantee the sovereignty of Laos and South Vietnam. NAM pushed membership of developing countries on to the UN against the wishes of the US (opposed pro-Soviet members) and the USSR (opposed pro-US). In 1955 16 countries joined (e.g. Cambodia, Jordan, Ceylon), four in 1956 (e.g. Japan, Sudan, Tunisia), in 1957 Malaysia and Ghana (Gold Coast) joined. This move was more than rhetorical as UN membership tied countries to a UN Charter that extended right of self-determination, and some of the NAM members were still mandate colonial countries (Gold Coast and Sudan). Bandung also made steps to project an economic manifesto for the better fairer treatment of the Third World. This manifesto informed demands for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the 1970s. NAM pushed for the establishment of a Special Fund for Development within the UN, which was set up in 1959 and eventually became the UN Development Programme (UNDP). NAM also promoted formation of the International Atomic Energy Agency and regional development banks. As NAM membership grew, a Group of 77 emerged at the first UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964. By 1974 the Group had expanded to 120 countries forming two-thirds of the 29th UN General Assembly that approved the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States (Declaration and Programme of Action for the Establishment of a New Economic Order). The Charter set out the basic tenets of development as a right, and prompted moves for policies that would either establish fairer trade or the use of NAM member power through the use of cartels to extract better prices from the developed world. Yet, the NIEO demonstrated both the potential of NAM and its frailty. In 19734, for example, the OPEC cartel took actions that increased the price of oil fourfold, but in so doing damaged the development prospects of oil-importing developing countries. At the 1975 Dakar meeting, NAM proposed an OPEC-style strategy to use buffer stocks to raise the prices of 18 commodities; the cartels never materialised although 1976 is the peak for the nationalisation of assets by developing countries. Through UNCTAD the NAM set the Lima Target to
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increase the proportion of industry in the developing world from seven per cent in the mid-1970s to 25 per cent by 2000, a target that is yet to be reached. Box 11.2 The Rise and Fall of the Non-Aligned Movement. (Quoted in Weekly Mail and Guardian, 28 August 1998) What can we do? We can do much! We can inject the voice of reason into world affairs. We can mobilise all the spiritual, all the moral, all the political strength of Asia and Africa on the side of peace. Yes, we! We, the peoples of Asia and Africa, 1,400,000,000 strong, far more than half the human population of the world, we can mobilise what I have called the Moral Violence of Nations in favour of peace. President Sukarno of Indonesia, Opening Address to the Asia-Africa Conference, Bandung, 18 April 1955. In the course of researching this article I telephoned a former colleague in London who is responsible for organising much of the foreign coverage on an international financial publication. I have often used him as a sounding-board for ideas and arguments, and I asked his thoughts on the Non-Aligned-Movement (NAM). He was astounded to hear that vast amounts of money at least R60 million (10m) were being spent to enable heads of state from many of NAMs 113 members to meet in Durban between August 29th and September 3rd. You mean to say he exclaimed the Non-Aligned Movement still exists? Havent they heard the Berlin Wall came down 10 years ago? The NIEO and NAM more generally was opposed by the developed world. At the vote for the Charter of Economic Rights, the 16 recognised developed countries either abstained or opposed. The US, especially through Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, sought to delay passing of agreements and used aid as a means to divide and rule. When the Cold War warmed up again in the 1980s, many NAM countries were forced to take sides at a time of world economic recession (197982) and debt crisis, although the alternative of Socialism was discredited as offering either growth without distribution or distribution without growth and examples of aplenty of elitism. Before 1989 the NAM was effectively over (see Box 11.2 above), and despite attempts at a revival through, for example, The New Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD) the jury is out as to whether a new breed of leaders has either the vision or the ability in a global age to deliver. See www.nepad.org/2005/files/home.php

The geopolitics of development: a second moment of refusal

Intellectually, there has been a return to critique of development. Critique has been motivated by at least two moves. First, is a turn to post-colonial thinking in the social sciences, we can observe a second refusal. Again, the proposition is not to accept the Western account of what it is to be underdeveloped. As Edward Said expressed it in Orientalism (1978), the West has sought historically to represent the Rest as exercise of power that reinforces a self-image that is heroic and inattentive to the violence of its actions:
Orientalism can be discussed and analysed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient dealing with it by making statements about it, authorising views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism is a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. (1978, p.3)

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Said points us to deconstruct representations (metaphors, signs, absences) that suggest some places as lacking in innovation, industry, aptitude for technology, fatalistic, immoral, erotic, feminine, dark, childlikein short, different, or underdeveloped. The second move is a more practical concern about the relationship between development thinking and outcome. By the 1980s it was clear to some observers that the study of development had reached an impasse in which the normative necessity of certain economic and social patterns to the process of development had obscured a debate about how these patterns may have changed. At fault was the reliance on basing development on a romantic Eurocentric economic and political history (class change, cultural values, state agency) which was both empirically dubious and, more importantly, denied alternative ideas of what development might or could be. According to Michael Edwards, the study of development had become part of the problem rather than the solution. Edwards (1989) asks, what we are to make of the 80,000 expatriate development experts in sub-Saharan Africa spending $4 billion per annum or the 20,000 international NGOs?3 Edwards wonders why our increasing knowledge of developing countries appears not to enable solutions to practical problems to be found. Is it that practitioners refuse to listen, should practitioners do development anyway or is it possible that development is offering the wrong kind of knowledge? Edwards suggests that there is a difficulty with method, a tension between how development is studied and how it should be done. While academics argue that understanding comes before change, for radical development practitioners changing world is more important than understanding it. The tension, however, results in three conditions. First, development is regarded as a matter of technical interpretation whereby knowledge is concentrated among those with technical capability to be transferred to those without. Second, programmed responses and models to seemingly generic situations when on the ground in practice usually address problems by trial and error with attention to the specific of locality. Third, a refusal to incorporate emotion in the serious study of development and yet without subjective empathy how can we learn from the poor? Edwards goes on to argue that there is also a difficulty with the subject. Typically, instead of being the subject of the solution, the poor, peasants, informal sector workers, women, became the object of the problem requiring their reform to remove constraints (custom) or improvement (nutrition, education). Yet, instead of being abnormal subjects are numerically the norm, in that while development reports and projects are often based on an abstract, male, economic and apolitical decision-maker, most low-income areas consist of disproportionate numbers of women and children. How then might recognition of these difficulties affect solutions? Edwards argues that development needs to make visible the subjects through participation rather than listening to them. Development should also adopt Action Research strategies (Chapter 3) and appeal to local answers and agency. This approach, of course, does rely on locals having or finding answers, and leaves moot whether agents are capable of undertaking action for solutions, and for whom in worlds that are culturally, socially, politically divided. While Edwards starts his paper by questioning the role of NGOs, his aim is not to dismiss their potential contribution at the time of the original paper Edwards was at Save the Children and he subsequently went on to work at the Civil Society departments of the
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Today the gure is nearer 29,000 and in Kenya approximately 240 new NGOs are set up every year.

Chapter 11: Geographies of development

World Bank and Ford Foundation but he is wary of how knowledge is collected and used. A critique of the agents of development, but from a perspective that is more strongly influenced by Said and other post-colonial writers, is evident in the positions taken on Post Development. The key author here is Arturo Escobar who regards development as a discursive field that constructs a political economy of truth. Escobar regards development as a continuation of colonialism, instead of military domination authority is produced through the systems of relations among discourses that create objects, concepts, strategies supported by a system of institutions that includes the World Bank, USAID, IMF, universities and (though unsaid) NGOs. Their technical representation of what constitutes development and how to achieve it de-authors knowledge, obscuring the origins of whose ideas predominate and whom these serve. Escobar cites an early World Bank mission to Chile in 1948 that had to teach government personnel how to write a project proposal in order to get Bank funding. The Chileans were represented as non-technical locals, while the mission staff hid from view their lack of experience and that the mission was organised on the hoof. Locals then are produced in ways that are intelligible to the experts; they become credit-worthy or micro-entrepreneurs although their cultures, histories are excluded from reports and plans. As situations change so do the labels nutrition experts become famine experts, landless peasants become small farmers the labels delink from context and produce measurable targets the more labels, the more targets, the more measurement is required, the more expertsIf development fails then missing components need to be added: social development, appropriate technology, good governance, capacity building, usually without proven justification. The result is that development leaves no aspect of life untouched in what Escobar refers to as the colonisation of the social. To Shrestha (1998), writing on Nepal, there is a colonisation of the mind as agencies claim to understand what is going on and what must be done, so that locals own ideas are made non-existent. The project is to create alternatives to development, involving a challenge to the predominant discourses. Countering the technicist language of medical and religious metaphors (of diagnosis, operation, prognosis, surgery), the military (mission, campaign, strategic strike), or terms such as basic needs or deficit, Escobar and Rahnema seek to represent as AIDS II or, with a hint of lifeboat earth as a train, modernist but useless, supplied with aid:
I remember Joseph Ki-Zerbo talking about a similar question at the Executive Board of UNESCO. He used the metaphor of a train which is in fact going nowhere. It crosses a drought-stricken region whose people believe it might take them to a better place. At each station hundreds of people try to board it, such that in the resultant overcrowding everyone risks being suffocated. Thus, for the travellers and those in charge of the train, the main problem becomes that of meeting their immediate physical needs. No one seems interested in where the train is taking them, and why they are on it. Obviously, in the situation created for the passengers on the train, anything that would relieve some of their urgent needs is welcome. Yet food and water is no use if no attempt is made to change the direction of the train If the train continues on the same old tracks, it will result in a disaster that would be beyond the help of such relief operations. (Rahnema, 1997, p.383) 205

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Nevertheless, there is a reluctance to make clear what the alternatives are for risk of appearing to be developers like those whom they despise. This leaves post-development with creating some awkward discourses and images of its own. Rahnema, for example, argues that we must look to vernacular knowledge, claiming that people are more joyful, less tense without cars, the internet, and consumer goods. Is this a kind of post-traditionalism that obscures the real achievements of development, and is nihilistic in terms of technology, whatever lies beyond localism, to urbanism, and difference that is not equated with simplicity and frugality? The irony, as Corbridge (1998) observes, is that coding the West as inauthentic, urban, consumerist, monstrous, lonely, anxious, greedy, shallow, and that treats development as universal and singular while the critique is local, heterogeneous and complex, depends on a binary that is deeply engrained in modernist Western thought. More beneficial perhaps is the hopeful trend created by the emergence of social movements that Escobar regards as essential to the creation of alternative visions of democracy, economy and society. Movements critique the failings of development, notably in terms of ecology, gender and democracy, and present opportunities for creating new spaces and discourses (of development) without demonising technology and modernity. True enough, but have social movements presented an alternative to development? Many have become coopted once political conditions allowed, and allied to governments following neoliberal development strategies, or have transformed into NGOs falling foul of some of the criticism levelled by Edwards, and in many cases becoming dependent on international donors. Overall, however, we might consider how far a critique of development discourses gets us. Does deconstructing the language provide scope for anything new? Lehmann (1997) wonders whether discourse analysis is analysis but rather a combination of innuendo and ridicule, pitiless indictments of the motives but no analysis of the effects of projects or the motives of their progenitors. In comparing post-development to the Dependistas, Lehmann points out that:
whereas dependency theory at least implicitly held out the hope of a future post-revolutionary state as a remedy, post-modern writing places its faith either in nothing, or in social movements of various kinds combined with the international NGO network. (1997, p.571)

As suggested by Sylvester of the post-colonial position more generally:

how the colonial and postcolonial era affects the way people label and think of themselves, and fight among each other is, to put it meanly, seemingly more important in postcolonial studies than questions of whether people eat. It is important to get the metaphors of postcoloniality right, the theoretical concepts honed. Judging by what has been published so far, it is not important to use those data to accomplish anything particular on the Third World ground. (1999, p.715)

Instead of addressing the structure of the world economy, post-development seems to rely on clever twists of metaphor, notwithstanding the difficulty of applying an AIDS metaphor if science finds a cure. Post-developments advocacy of alternatives speaks for locals, using terms such as citizenship, empowerment, feminism, that are, if not exclusively, Western concepts and have been strongly embraced and promoted by development practitioners and agencies along with discourses and practices of rights, justice and democracy.

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A reminder of your learning outcomes

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: discuss the origins of terms such as underdeveloped and development critically evaluate how development became a mainstream initiative in the midlate twentieth century evaluate whether development can be judged a success in its own terms identify a number of critiques of development as a practice and an idea.

Sample examination questions

1. The global debt crisis was neither global nor was it a crisis about debt. Evaluate this statement. 2. Democracy has been good for development. Discuss.

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Notes

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Chapter 12: The cultural geography of consumption

Chapter 12: The cultural geography of consumption

Essential reading
Crang, P . LocalGlobal, in Cloke, P . et al. (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Crang, P . The Geographies of Material Culture, in Cloke, P . et al. (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Crang, P . Worlds of Consumption, in Daniels, P . et al. (eds) An Introduction to Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008). Desforges, L. Travel and Tourism, in Cloke, P . et al. (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Goss, J. Consumption Geographies, in Cloke, P . et al. (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Ilbery, B. Changing Geographies of Global Food Production, in Daniels, P . et al. (eds) An Introduction to Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2008). Jackson, P . Consumption in a Globalising World, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Watts, M. Commodities, in Cloke, P . et al. Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Whatmore, S. From Farming to Agribusiness: Global Agri-Food Networks, in Johnston, R.J. et al. (eds) Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).

Further reading
Appadurai, A. Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy, Theory, Culture and Society, (7) 1990, pp.295310. Cohen, E. Thai Tourism: Hill Tribes, Islands and Open Ended Prostitution, (Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus Press, c.2001). Cook, I. Follow the Thing: Papaya, Antipode, (36) 2004, pp.64264. Cook, I. and P . Crang The World on a Plate: Culinary Culture, Displacement and Geographical Knowledges, Journal of Material Culture, 1(2) 1996, pp.13153. Daviron, B. and S. Stefano Ponte The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise of Development. (London: Zed Books, 2005). Gwynne, R. Globalisation, Commodity Chains and Fruit Exporting Regions in Chile, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 90(2) 1999, pp.21125. Hannerz, U. Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture, Theory, Culture & Society, (7) 1990, pp.23751. Jones, G.A. Imaginative Geographies of Latin America, in Swanson, P . (ed.) Companion to Latin American Studies. (Edward Arnold, 2003). Lisle. D. Consuming Danger: Reimagining the War/Tourism Divide, Alternatives, (25) 2000, pp.91116. May, J. A Little Taste of Something More Exotic, Geography, 81(1) 1996, pp.5764. May, J. In Search of Authenticity Off and On the Beaten Track, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (14) 1996, pp.70936. 209

09 Human geography Munt. I. The Other Postmodern Tourist: Culture, Travel and the New Middle Classes, Theory, Culture and Society, (11) 1994, pp.10123. Pettman, J. Body Politics: International Sex Tourism, Third World Quarterly, 18(1) 1997, pp.93108. Renard, M-C. The Interstices of Globalisation: The Example of Fair Coffee, Sociologia Ruralis, 39(4) 1999, pp.484500. Sanchez-Taylor, J. Dollars are a Girls Best Friend? Female Tourists Sexual Behaviour in the Caribbean, Sociology, 35(3) 2001, pp.74964. Smith, M.D. The Empire Filters Back: Consumption, Production, and the Politics of Starbucks Coffee, Urban Geography, 17(6) 1996, pp.50224. Tomlinson, B. Cultural Globalisation: Placing and Displacing the West, European Journal of Development Research, 8(2) 1996, pp.2235.

Aims of the chapter

This final chapter is, in different ways, about travel. I want to introduce a range of ideas about how we understand the ways that ideas, goods and experiences travel around the world. It deals with three large topics: the movement of commodities from their creation in one or many parts of the world to their consumption somewhere else, and how that consumption defines who we are but says little about how the goods we consume were produced. It then looks at what happens when we consume places through the experience of tourism, and in this instance when the tourists are from the developed world and the consumed are from the developing South. The chapter will introduce a number of important terms such as the commodity chain, cultural Imperialism, hybridity and sex tourism.

Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: critically evaluate concepts such as Cultural Imperialism, hybridity, commodity chains describe how developed and developing countries interact through consumption discuss how developed and developing countries interact through tourism.

Cultural imperialism and global commodity chains

Consumption provides us with one means to understand the complex ways in which different parts of the world are connected. Here, I want to concentrate my examples on the chains that move primary commodities in one location, to become processed as food in another, consumed as cuisine and good taste at the end of the chain. One might argue that with the process of globalisation these chains have become more diverse, more complex, possibly longer and different in kind as what was once farming is now increasingly regarded as agribusiness. My concerns are how we understand what is going on along these chains, including when they threaten a consumer cultural imperialism or homogeneous world culture. Look at an English, French or probably Indian village 300400 years ago and despite rapidly developing trade routes, most people probably sourced their food, clothing and basic supplies within the self-same village region. Most other items would be acquired within the country and if, as in the case of sugar or spices, goods did come from abroad these were from a
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few locations. Fast forward to the beginning of the twentieth century and the dinner table of most UK households displayed quite literally the fruits of empire as well as its tea, coffee, sugar. The table itself quite likely was made of imported wood and the family would be clothed in garments made from, if not yet manufactured, by material processed in a variety of different countries. As Stuart Hall has written, the history outside Britain was also a history inside Britain, past spatial constructions survive and influence contemporary culture. Less than a century on again and the imperial preference had given way to what we might think of as consumer globalisation. An average UK supermarket today displays over 20,000 items comprising many thousands of ingredients. Wine shelves once had bottles from France and Germany almost exclusively. In the 1980s supermarkets began to sell wines from the US and from Spain and Portugal as the latter countries joined the European Community. By the end of the decade wines from Eastern Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Chile were in evidence. Lately, one can see more wines from Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and occasionally North Africa. Similar changes can be seen for beers, bottled water, vegetables and fruit (mangetouts from Zimbabwe, avocados, chiles, asparagus from Mexico, strawberries from Tanzania), and cut flowers (Tanzania, Colombia). We might not have a global village just yet but we do have a global village shop. The globalisation of food has meant the end of seasonal produce and regional cooking. There is an uneasy tension here between a sense that variety has diminished, older people lament that the young no longer know when is a good time to buy produce in season. Supermarkets rarely market foods as seasonal what would that mean for an avocado or kiwi fruit to be in season in central London? Rather, the marketing vocabulary emphasises fresh as a simile that produce has left the point of production and arrived at a warehouse as quickly as possible 30 years ago that meant by refrigeration and in the last 10 that means by air freight. At the same time that the variety of having tomatoes in July but not in October wanes, we are able to buy more and more fruits and vegetables (wines, beers, clothes, music) from a greater variety of places. And this is a process that is evident not only in Europe or the US, but is itself becoming more global. As a friend in Mexico said to me, her life could be divided into the years before broccoli and those post-broccoli, after the North American Free Trade Agreement opened the economy to more non-tariff imports. How can we understand this tension between homogeneity and variety? The French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard preferred the term eclecticism:
Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonalds for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro clothing in Hong Kong; knowledge is matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works. (The Postmodern Condition, 1986)

Others are less keen to avoid neutral judgment and see what is happening as cultural imperialism. This argument tends to point to images of the developing South as under a kind of cultural duress from Northern consumer tastes. In place of governments the new imperialists are transnational corporations producing Coca-Colonisation, McDonaldisation or an eventual Planet Reebok. Schiller (1991) likens the process of value exploitation to a consumerist virus that produces a cultural dependency meaning that people in our country have to brush their teeth three times a day, even if they dont have anything to eat
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(Cardova, in Sklair, 1991, p.155). It is a pessimistic view that a critical reading of the rhetoric from TNCs does little to dispute. Consider, for example, this 1971 statement from the Chief Executive of McDonalds in Japan:
If we eat hamburgers and potatoes for 1,000 years, we will become taller, our skin will become whiter and our hair blonder.

Development agencies have been caught into the equation of consumption with development. Over a half-century ago James Viner wrote that:
We want the common man and his wife and his children to have not only Coca-Cola and chewing gum and ice cream, not only modern plumbing, automobiles, refrigerators and electric lighting, but also good health and good diet, good education [and] the benefits and virtues of political democracy and social security. (J. Viner Americas aims and the progress of underdeveloped countries, in B. Hoselitz (ed.) The Progress of Underdeveloped Areas, 1952, pp.175202.)

Note the order in which the benefits of development would arrive. Today, agencies such as the UNDP express concerns that competitive spending is counterproductive to basic needs.
Given the social pressure, these felt needs may compete for relatively poor people in rich countries even with the provision of resources for food, nutrition and health care. This can explain the prevalence of some hunger and malnutrition, especially among children, even in the United States, where incomes are high but inequalities generate a heavy burden of necessity in the direction of socially obligated consumption, often to the detriment of health and nutritional spending. (UNDP , 1997, p.18) Pressures of competitive spending and conspicuous consumption turn the affluence of some into the social exclusion of many. When there is heavy social pressure to maintain high consumption standards and society encourages competitive spending for conspicuous displays of wealth, inequalities in consumption deepen poverty and social exclusion. (UNDP , 1998)

Nevertheless, development indicators are increasingly consumption oriented the $1 per day baseline for absolute poverty assumes the purchase of something, nobody is talking about a one bowl of rice measure and the World Bank charts the acquisition of television sets and internet access. The concern then is that all people, but especially those in the developing South, are susceptible to the pressures of advertising selling goods and tastes that are outside of cultural norms. Again, there is some evidence to the argument. With the global advertising industry worth around $435 billion per annum some of the fastest-growing geographical sectors are in the developing South. Between 1986 and 1996 for example, advertising spend in South Korea rose threefold, in the Philippines spend increased 39 per cent per annum from 1987 to 1992. In 1986 only three developing countries were among the 20 biggest spenders in advertising, whereas by 1997 there were nine. Measured as advertising spending as percentage of national income, Colombia ranks first with 2.6 per cent of GDP . The assumption is that advertising obliges consumers to buy non-local and thus commodities inappropriate to local surroundings. In the vernacular, advertising makes foreign goods into household names and more. A 1993 survey showed that after OK the most
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widely recognised expression in the world was Coca Cola while product characters such as Ronald McDonald, Mickey Mouse, Colonel Sanders, the Green Giant and Michelin Man are seen as cultural ambassadors. Coca Cola, allegedly one of the most advertised products in the world, emphasises its global or rather placeless quality in its campaigns. While synonymous with the American dream, Coca Cola adverts have shifted from place- and language-specific contexts to dialogue-free content suitable for over-dubbing. Note the shift in the straplines from well teach the world to sing (1970s) to Coke is it (1980s), to The Real Thing, Always Coca Cola (1990s) to the latest cartoon-based advert using a polar landscape, no dialogue and the simple logo Always. Advertising seems to be doing its job, suggesting to people that luxuries are necessities regardless of affordability and cultural impact. The argument itself makes good media copy. A focus of unwanted attention is often Nestl, damned for an aggressive marketing campaign (including sales people dressed as nurses) to encourage mothers in Africa to switch from breast feeding to infant formula. According to UNICEF, formula is an inferior source of nourishment because where people lack access to clean water the tendency is to over-dilute, and the World Health Organization claims that formula babies have IQs eight points lower than breastfed children. More humorous are reports of Brazil importing plastic palm trees from Florida, Venezuelans buying sachets of Scottish water to have with their whisky; Puerto Rico importing 65,000lbs of snow from Alaska to create a white Christmas in the Caribbean, and of shopping mall employees in Prto Alegre forced to dress as Santa Claus with beard, coat and hat in 30 degree temperatures (allegedly a court case forced the mall to allow employees not to wear the hat). But beyond media headlines how do we assess cultural imperialism? One way is clearly to consider the growth and spread of the corporations that motivate global consumption. A good example is Coca Cola which from formation in 1886 had expanded to every US state by 1895, to Europe by 1900, to 28 countries by 1929 and 155 by 1980. A top 100 multinational, Coca Cola has sales in excess of $23.6 billion globally, with a rate of growth around five per cent per annum for much of the past 20 years. Sales are assured through horizontal integration, the sole provider to McDonalds (itself establishing 500 new units per annum until recently; conversely Pepsi owns Pizza Hut and KFC). Yet this global dominance obscures the fact that almost one-half of Coca Cola sales are from just five countries, with the US contributing just over one-quarter. Moreover, Coca Cola is vulnerable to globalisation as much as it has power over it. Pepsi, for example, established a foothold in communist USSR and China, precisely by representing itself as not the imperialist Coke, a tactic that paid off with the opening of economies since, and its support for the African National Congress against Apartheid allowed Pepsi and not Coca Cola to monopolise distribution in the townships after 1994. Recently, Coca Cola has claimed unsuccessfully to be the victim of Cultural Imperialism, filing a claim in the US against Cadbury Schweppes purchase of Sunkist/Canada Dry and Dr Pepper/Seven-Up which would make Cadbury the largest producer of non-cola soft drinks in the US. The global corporate need to associate media advertising with consumption may also be undermined by the geography of communication. While, on the one hand, communication has become more global, on the other it has become more fragmented. With cable, mobile phones and the internet, consumers no longer have access to four or 44 media channels but hundreds. According to the adage nothing travels as quickly as bad news.
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And so, while in 1998 Coca Cola was able to Memo magazines in receipt of its contracts that Coke adverts should be placed near positive editorials, away from anything that seemed to be hard news and articles on drugs, sex, medicine (specifically AIDs, cancer and diabetes), diet, environmental or religious issues, and six pages from an advert placed by a competitor, it could not stop the Memo itself being leaked and sent across the internet. Think too of the news that Pepsi sponsored Michael Jackson tours to bring the image of the company to a young audience, a move that backfired when the tour was cancelled on grounds of dehydration, but also other image problems, only for Jackson to be replaced by Britney Spears. Finally, as consumer goods and communications media become global, the need for sensitivity to cultural values becomes more, not less, important. In 1998 Nike launched a campaign for Air Bakin with a logo showing flames, the message that these shoes are so hot, theyre on fire. To Arabic speakers however, the logo looked like script for Allah and Nike had to withdraw 30,000 pairs from the Middle East. Before it seems that I am urging you to take pity on transnational corporations and relax about the dangers of cultural imperialism, let me underscore that my purpose is to generate critical reflection about the interaction of culture and space rather than easy reaction. As with the anti-development stance taken by some academics, there is in the cultural imperialism argument a danger of seeing all consumption as bad. As such, is the cultural imperialism arguments pro-localism also elitist? Is it suggesting that rich people can have Nike, Coke, Playstation, BMWs, but poorer people must preserve their culture instead? Where, however, are we to erect the barriers to this imperialism? Should we be concerned only by consumption of Coca Cola and hamburgers? Should we also prevent the Brazilians from playing football, Puerto Ricans from baseball and Indians from cricket? Should my partner not be allowed to go to Salsa classes and for me to have an occasional Mexican beer? Do I worry about the Hispanisation of Europe? What is worse, that 2550 per cent of programmes on Latin American TV are imported from the US or that only about two per cent of US programming is foreign. Is vulnerability to global consumerism worse than self-exclusion? If we associate (and demonise) Rupert Murdoch (Sky), Sony, AOL-Time Warner with globalising media, what are we to make of India that exports 230 Bollywood films per annum and Greece which represents their largest per capita audience? We should be careful not to suggest that developing countries are vulnerable to Cultural Imperialism because consumers are cultural dopes who mindlessly obey the instructions of MNCs and advertisers. One way to avoid this easy notion that goods and ideas move from rich, powerful countries to poorer, weaker ones producing homogeneous culture at the expense of local culture and without resistance is to consider the notions of hybridity and hetrogenisation. According to Hannerz (1990) hybridity relates to the mixing of cultural forms to produce different variants of the original, whereas in the work of Appadurai (1990), heterogenisation captures the sense that as goods, ideas or cultural formats are brought from one context to another the world becomes more diverse rather than the same. There is rarely a case for a simple and predictable substitution. Consider the following example noted on the streets of Manila. At a traffic light a vendor approaches lines of cars offering from a small tray a range of cigarettes. The vendor is called a Cowboy because, as far as I was able to tell, of the association with Marlboro. Many of the vendors are badly nourished, poor and are unlikely to have ever rounded up cattle
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in Texas but the macho image, like the cigarette, has travelled only to become something different on receipt. Or, let us think of elite kids in the shopping malls, beaches or country clubs of Brazil. Their status is, in part, confirmed by their access to US or Italian designer clothes, perfumes, sunglasses, mobile phones, cars and a proclivity for leisure. The elite kids, however, become victims to theft and mugging by gangs from the favelas. In the 1980s favela gangs used a technique known as the arrastao (drag net), literally sweeping through malls and beaches stealing from everyone in their path. In the absence of acquiring the real thing poorer youth, however, would copy the elites with fake versions of the fashion label goods, acting up louder, challenging versions of the music or mobile phone conversations. The mimics became known as Farofeiros (those that eat manioc) while the poorer kids in turn critiqued the richer kids as Mauricinhos (those who avoid the real Brazil).

The political economy of global cultural change

What is happening behind the scenes of global cultural change? What is the spatial form of cultural imperialism? If we go back to the dinner plate of imperial preference the answer was quite probably an enclave economy, of single product regions linked to coast (port) and thus to a metropolitan centre, and consequently divorced from the hinterland. The enclave economy typically included the plantation and the mine, and despite the industrialisation of developing countries during the twentieth century, primary goods (excluding oil) amounted to 90 per cent of all merchandise exports into the 1970s and by 1990 had barely fallen to 50 per cent. Indeed, looking at Latin America in 1990 a single primary export ranging from oil, coffee, bananas to meat, accounted for 30 per cent of exports in 16 countries, and the next two most important exports accounted for up to 70 per cent of exports. In the case of Belize, for example, sugar represents about 33 per cent of exports, fruit juice and mens clothes make up 62 per cent. The enclave economy has been resistant to globalisation, especially in agriculture. What has changed is how places have integrated into international food space economy. The Commodity Chain is a useful tool to understand this change. The Chain refers to the processing and adding of value as a raw material is transformed into a commodity, and it seeks to locate the conditions along the route that facilitate or hinder processing, and where value creation takes place. In the enclave economy, the transformation of materials into commodities mostly took place in the latter stages of the chain, in the developed world which also retained most of the value. Over time, and for certain goods, the geography of chains has shifted. First, the shift is related to the industrialisation of food production that has seen a greater degree of processing take place closer to source. In the case of fruits from Chile, a trade worth $30m in 1974 was worth $1.1 billion in 1995. Second, is the changing demands of consumers, or retailers, for regional (read ethnic) cuisine; and healthy food that requires foods to be processed closer to their origin sector in the Caribbean. Third, Multilateral Institution promotion of free trade has disrupted established enclavemetropole relations. Thus the World Trade Organization ruling (at the behest of Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala and the US) for the removal of the EU Banana Protocol that set a 20 per cent quota for Caribbean bananas into the EC and tariffs on others has shifted commodity chains. Faced with the removal of a protected market producers in the Windward Islands for whom 60 per cent of exports and 30 per cent of employment depended on bananas, and the MNC shippers and retailers who gained
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from the $2 billion premium paid by EC consumers for Protocol bananas, had to diversify. One method was to move into organic bananas to meet a growing consumer demand in Europe. Another was for small family farms to organise into a company, as 15,000 growers in St Lucia have done, to amalgamate lands and infrastructure, and to negotiate single retail agreements with retailers that are not covered by WTO rules. Third, to find another cash crop such as cannabis: the US Drug Enforcement Agency now put St Vincent and St Lucia at the top of its list of transhipment points. For analyses of the commodity chains associated with coffee, see Daviron and Ponte (2005) and Renard (1999), for fruits see Cook (2004) and Gwynne (1999). How do commodity chains end and how does capitalism produce additional value for mundane goods? The answer may lie in the unpicking of what Karl Marx called commodity fetishism: the ignorance of consumers to the conditions under which a good is produced. Today, there may be a new fetish, the informed consumer who is willing to pay more, a lot more, in order to access, enjoy and understand global food. In so doing, the consumer is partaking in a politics of difference, consuming not the food, drink, late model car, audio devicebut also the symbolic meanings that define the difference between him/her and other people (Appadurai, 1990). The politics of difference is facilitated by the idea of being part of a cultural class who possess geographical knowledge: where an item came from, who produced it, how it got here, where is the best place to encounter it, what environment comes with consumption of this item. For the cultural class of young professionals, it is important to invest symbolic meanings into commodities and the surroundings in which they are consumed in order to signify their taste (May, 1996). According to Cook and Crang (1996), we can consider three ways in which geographical imaginations interact with consumption. First, the setting or where one eats is important to the signals of status and taste. The setting for the consumption of gourmet coffee is modern stylised surroundings that offer a West Coast US-meets-European coffee house environment, open-plan design with sofas and small tables to encourage social interaction, and floor-to-ceiling glass frontages and outward-facing stools to see the street, and be seen (Smith, 1996). These restaurants and bars are also associated with sites of gentrification. Indeed, Starbucks makes a virtue of this relationship, claiming that the presence of a new coffee bar is evidence that an area is ripe for redevelopment, a process that it has boosted in the US through joint ventures with community groups (Jones, 2003). The second interaction of geographical imagination and consumption works by creating biographies of how a commodity arrived in the store or on the dinner table. The biography may involve a play on distance, of how the materials were brought from afar for just this drink or meal or may seek to establish a direct relation between the consumer and producer, as a friend close to home. Thus, a leaflet picked up at a Starbucks in central London called The Story of Good Coffee: Whole Bean Coffee describes the process by which the bean is bought, roasted and served. In addition to the obvious attention to the flavour and freshness, the leaflet tells a story involving only two principal actors: the buyer for Starbucks and the baristas who are trained professionals dedicated to helping you find your perfect cup. Working together this team is willing to go to extreme lengths. In this biography, however, nobody seems to grow the coffee bean which is reassuringly, if improbably, purchased on taste alone, regardless of price.
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Third, is the identification of origins. This geographical imagination has been fundamental to wine consumption for a long time, where consumers (are asked to) associate drinking with a particular valley in Chile. In the case of coffee, retailers have trained the consumer to appreciate origins by, for example, the use of maps. One map is Starbucks website which offers consumers the opportunity to Taste the Sights through World Coffee Tours by receiving every eight weeks a selection of exotic coffees from around the world. A narrative style map is Starbucks leaflet, The World of Coffee: In Search of the Best Beans, that guides the consumer to coffeeproducing areas, noting how climate, altitude and soil affect the quality of the bean. This map works by conflating places into coffee regions such as Arabia or Central America while presenting others, such as Costa Rica, as outside these regions in order to accentuate the distinction of their coffees (Smith, 1996, p.515). Even greater imagination is at work when Yukon Blend, symbolised by a grizzly bear, is described as made from the brisk qualities of Latin American coffees [and] the heaviness of a select Indonesian coffee. Harmless fun? Or, does the exotic rely upon imaginative geographies of race (May, 1996)? It is notable that coffee, place and people become interchangeable through terms such as wild, mysterious, sun-blasted, chocolatey, spicy, or sexualised as inviting, satisfying, and with enough full-bodied muscle to stand up to cream (also Smith, 1996). Restaurants and shops too represent a place of origin for the food, often in ways that suggest an exotic, mysterious, spiritual, or even faux-colonial or travel-associated theme.

The tourist map

A centrepiece of the relation between consumption and geographical imagination is the tourist experience. Tourism involves the selling of an idea of place in much the same way as Starbucks makes us believe that its coffee represents the flavours, sights and smells of a point of origin. Moreover, like the domination of certain places by consumer goods and their values in the process described as cultural imperialism, the arrival of tens, thousands or millions of tourists is regarded as tantamount to global cultural change and hence viewed with concern in some quarters. See Tourism Concerns Sun, Sand, Sea and Sweatshops campaign (www. tourismconcern.org.uk). At stake of course is a major commercial phenomenon. According to the World Tourism Organisation, there were 595 million foreign trips made in 1996, a 600 per cent increase on 1960, a figure expected to reach 940 million in 2010. Tourism is worth about $3.6 trillion or 10 per cent of global GDP , and employs 225 million people. Fourteen of the top 20 destinations for tourists are developing countries and for one-third of all developing countries tourism receipts are the largest single contributor to GDP . Tourists bring hard currency, jobs in construction, food production and preparation, transport and hotel trades. On the downside, sovereignty can almost appear to be at stake as MNC companies operate hotels and travel facilities (60 per cent hotel capacity in The Philippines is from Australia), retain revenues and profits in tax shelters, insist on non-union labour and, as for example in the Bahamas, bring in more tourists than locals at peak season with consequent pressures on water and electricity supply. As with t-shirts, trainers, chocolate or bananas, we are susceptible to commodity fetishism. A high-status travel destination for the past few years has been Myanmar that has opened its economy but not its political structure since the late 1980s. Tourism is regarded as a major source of
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hard currency, in part to fund military spending that accounts for around 40 per cent of the budget. To this end tourist facilities have been built by forced labour, up to one million people in villages in Yangon have been relocated and in Karen State indigenous groups moved to ethnic model villages. Elsewhere, tourists may be oblivious to what the Global AntiGolf Movement has termed golf imperialism. In Thailand during the 1990s, one golf course opened every 10 days, while in Indonesia onehalf of courses are owned by the Suharto family or the military able to ignore regulations zoning many course locations as nature reserves. A golf course consumes the equivalent water of 2,000 families. In Redang Island, Malaysia, the government invested in a water pipeline for a golf course while local villages endured an cholera epidemic and the impact of herbicides from the course running-off into the mangrove and coral reef. How tourists distinguish themselves from each other and consume the images of the tourist experience, are powerful forces in the contemporary human condition. I write this as a traveller, an independent, knowledgeable person who understands local conditions and takes an interest in customs, appreciates the need for travel to involve reciprocity and sustainable practices. My bookshelves are full of Lonely Planet guidebooks. I own a rucksack, have leaflets with inoculation requirements around the globe, have a world traveller insurance policy, and speak a couple of languages (badly). I think of myself as a guest in other peoples lives and I am not, ever, a tourist, who buys a pre-ordered experience from a company, is cocooned in a hotel, sees value in the idea of a private beach, only engages with locals by invitation in the hotel lobby, is ignorant of the effect on the environment or culture. As a traveller I am forever on the look out for new locations to travel to. Travellers do realise that there are few unmapped locations in the world today, that travel as exploration is myth. So instead, travellers change the context for travel. Thus Nick Danzigers journey through Russian-occupied Afghanistan with an arms convoy is travel because of how it was done and not where. In The Worlds Most Dangerous Places, Robert Young Pelton discusses tours of Bosnia, Somalia and elsewhere, while places such as the polar ice caps, Afghanistan and Congo are discussed as new locations (Lisle, 2000). Travellers then are disdainful of places that seem to have lost their originality. The nightmare is captured in Ross Gilners film The Tourist which depicts a group of travellers setting off at 3am to climb a mountain in Nepal intending to reach the summit in time to meditate with the dawn. Passing the final ridge the travellers are dismayed to find hawkers setting up food stands for the tourists set to arrive later in the day. And so the distinction between tourist and traveller is more slight than both might imagine. Travellers are the vanguard of tourism: aiming to see a place before it is spoiled. They open locations to the tourist trail, send the information back home, become the subjects of documentaries and newspaper articles, and grab the attention of travel companies. While the distinction between tourist and traveller has been with us for a while, and has formed a centrepiece of marketing campaigns, to the awareness of most who would distinguish between the two identities of the narrowness of the difference, other categorisations have also emerged. Hannerz (1990), for example, identifies cosmopolitans as people who claim a relationship with a plurality of cultures and engage with distinction. Munt (1994) sets out the characteristics of Ego or Chic Tourists who wrap travel up with education on bespoke designer tours heavily invested with nostalgia, and dark tourists who gravitate to places of terror such as Auschwitz, former slaving halls or refugee camps. Finally, there are
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the post-modern tourists who recognise the lack of originality in the travel experience and retreat to their armchair to travel via TV programmes or the internet, or who seek out the fake, catered for in the Theme Parks (700-plus in US alone) and the growing number of relatively indistinct heritage sites. These additional categories illustrate how there is an Art to travel. We can appreciate this art through three processes: 1. Separation: the distance from routine social structure. As expressed by Levi Strauss, Not only does a journey transport us over enormous distances, it also causes us to move a few degrees up or down the social scale. It displaces us physically and also for better or for worse takes us out of our class context, so that the colour and flavour of certain places cannot be dissociated from the always unexpected social level on which we find ourselves in experiencing them (1989, p.105). As Hannerz notes, separation is implicit in the tourist experience which is home plus, so that India is home plus servants, Africa is home plus elephants 2. Liminality: the overturning of certainty in daily life. In tourism, an itinerary is arranged at 3pm the Masai warriors will dance, followed by an English tea with scones on the lawn at 4pm. By contrast, for travellers there is more chance in the act of discovery, events are out of the ordinary although the staging might remain but hidden. Janice McIlvaine McClary describes an encounter with gorillas:
It was an unforgettable moment. Somehow the gorilla symbolised what is left of the wilderness, of a world belonging to the animals, free and unbridled by men and materialism. To see the greatest of the great apes at close range was to see a glimpse of Eden, of the world as it once was, without computers or condominums, schedules and the draining sense of time. (New York Times, 1985, p.37)

Unknown was the guide who locates the gorillas by theatrically sniffing the air and reading the signs in the jungle foliage who had habituated the gorillas to humans by laying food. 3. Reintegration: the need to pass back into society a different person, requiring stories about adventures, smells, foods. In the excellent Holidays in Hell, P .J. ORourke observes that, Modern tourists have to see the squalor so they can tell everyone back home how it changed their perspective on life. Describing squalor, if done with sufficient indignation, makes friends and relatives morally obligated to listen to your boring vacation stories (squalor is conveniently available, at reasonable prices, in Latin America) (p.20). Similarly, Jon May (1996) cites an article by Everett to make his point:
Travel tales are, to one who does not travel, the ultimate bore If theres anything worse than a traveller telling travelling stories, its two or more vying with each other to see who experiences the worse conditions and saw the most incredible thing Whenever I see two people wearing Peruvian yak-hair jumpers, I recoil in horror. Snatches of their conversation drift across. So you say you have done the Guatemala/Kathmandu circuit? Yeah? Dont tell me you went to that amazing back street dive in Tangiers? With the guy with the AK47? Wow, hes really amazingTravellers seem to ignore the fact that what theyre grasping at is, to some people, normal lifeTo hear them talk youd think the whole Third World was one big Technicolor 219

09 Human geography shebang co-hosted by Mother Theresa and Andy Kershaw Not only is it ludicrous, its patronising. But travellers dont seem to careSo what if you ate chilli-seasoned snapper under the cherry moonIf you nip down to Tesco you can do that in Colwyn Bay. (F. Everett, Did I mention the Yaks? Company Magazine, 1994)

Considering these three processes as a composite, one can appreciate why Hannerz believes that tourism/travel is a spectator sport in which the tourist/traveller is implicated in the landscape, either changing the landscape by presence or having it changed (staged) for their arrival. As with the purchase of our coffees, clothes or cars on the high street, the tourist/travel experience occurs through a battery of images that sell places. In attempting to manage these images companies push the separation, liminality and reintegration. Consider for example the nostalgic claims in these adverts:
East Africa is perhaps the last place on earth where we can see the dramatic epic of life unfolding much as it has since the dawn of time. Here we can view the daily struggle for survival on the vast African plain, and see people and wildlife living, for the most part, unaffected by our rapidly changing society. (African Classics) India is a land truly apartcolourful, eventful, intense and exoticthe ultimate destination for the traveller, seeking the new, the unknown, and the romantic. One of the worlds oldest civilisations its customs and legends, intricate and meaningful, have endured the passage of time. (TransIndus)

Brochures contain images of the Raj, of spices, faded photos, pith helmets, with Abercrombie & Kent tours called Sandalwood, Silk & Spice, or with Cox & Kings making a direct link between the companys formation in 1758 and colonialism. A promised reintegration story is evident with:
Come with us to Kenya. Its an experience that will stay with you for a lifetime. (SafariWorld) No one who has ever set foot on African soil has left there unmoved, and many are changed forever. (TransSafari)

The South African tourist agency, fearful that British tourists would be put off by stories of crime, took a group of London taxi drivers to South Africa with the proviso that on their return they would tell customers about the wonders of the place. Their reintegration became the departure point for thoughts of separation and liminality for others. The relation between consumption and imagination through the tourist gaze is perhaps at its most extreme when the images of a place are associated with sex. Like tourism generally, sex tourism is a growing, lucrative, industry that is increasingly global. In Thailand there were estimated to be 20,000 prostitutes in 1957, 800,000 in 1992 and two million by 2000. By some estimates one in 12 Thai women (aged 1534) work or have worked in prostitution at some point in their lives (80,000 started as children). In some countries, notably South Korea during the 1950s and The Philippines in relation to US military bases, governments formalised the training of prostitutes as a means to attract capital with South-east Asia and the Caribbean also favoured locations for international business conferences. The arrival of Japan as a tourist nation (in 1965 159,000 Japanese international tourists had risen to 5.5 million by 1986) has been given another boost. The largest group of visitors to South-east
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Asia is the 3040 age group Japanese men: 57 per cent departees from Japan but 70 per cent of arrivees to Thailand are men. Finally, sex tourism and trafficking may be related with prostitutes in Thailand brought in from Vietnam, in India from Nepal, in Mexico from Guatemala, in South Africa from Zimbabwe, and in Western Europe from South-east Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. As part of what Ash and Turner (1975) once called the pleasure periphery, developing countries especially are often imagined as sites of desire which, as in the colonial period, serve to spice up the lives of jaded businessmen, a place to experiment, exert power denied at home and risky (Pettman, 1997). As adverts quoted in the literature put it:
a holiday may be a chance for you to discover yourself and meet someone special and when the mixing and mingling is doneget away somewhere quiet and discover each other (quoted in Truong 1990, p.125) As for Club Mediterrane, most of what youve heard about it is probably true, the good along with the bad. There are three club villages in the Caribbeanand yes, two of them are sex factories. (in Truong 1990, p.125)

A growing industry packages countries and people according to myths of sexuality, passivity and religion. An agency called Pimps R US organises sex tours to the Dominican Republic with clients offered a menu of sexual services, a scorecard against which encounters can be ticked off and graded, by race and age, competitions offer prizes and everyone gets a souvenir baseball cap with the company logo. Growth is also accompanied by commodification: prostitution is more organised, hours and behaviours are routinised, styles change away from traditional dress toward exotic, western dress, body language is modified with smoking and drinking, names are changed to English/German/ French. Consider this quote from Heyzers study of Thailand:
For all her exuberance, frivolity and easy laughter, even the girl working within Thailands entertainment industry remains traditionally ThaiA young girl with long black hair in a sequinned bikini and high heels lights incense and walks across the room to place it on a Buddhist shrine. But, as she walks, she cannot resist swaying a bit to the incessant sound of the latest taped music. (1986, p.53)

So how do we understand sex tourism within our earlier frameworks of cultural imperialism? If we apply the tripology of separation, liminality and reintegration to sex tourism we can draw some similarities. Sex tourism separates the tourist from the routine social structure, and notably the gendered relations, of home. While most feminists argue that most societies remain stubbornly patriarchal, some suggest that the increase in sex tourism is a response to womens rights at home. More generally, perhaps, the images indicated in the quotes above suggest an imagination sold as mystery, relaxed inhibition, an opportunity for subverting ethnic/race mix or legal age limits. We should note, however, that from the tourist viewpoint separation requires that what is a negative or taboo at home is constructed as a positive in the country of destination (consumption). So the delusion goes, it is not the sex tourist who is imposing his social or sexual attitudes on to others more vulnerable than him, as these social relations and sexual practices are normal in these places. Liminality is suggested by the prevalence of unprotected sex suggesting a perception of risk away that
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is inconsistent with perception of risk at home. This despite widespread news reports of HIV infection rates in Thailand for example in excess of 1.5 per cent of the general population. It hardly needs pointing out that sex tourism offers reintegration stories back home. But let us challenge just two of these standard readings of sex tourism that rely on the dominant developed country male over the developing country woman. The aim is not to suggest this reading is incorrect but to indicate that, as with cultural imperialism through goods rather than bodies, that there are complex angles. The first is research offered by Erik Cohen (c.2001) who suggests that researchers have not questioned the image of predator male and female victim. Indeed, both consumers and critics of sex tourism adopt much of the same imagery. Asia Watchs report A Modern Form of Slavery, for example, presents sex workers as poor, young, coerced, diseased, working in dirty, dangerous places to create moral outrage. Cohen is concerned that the image of passivity undermines the voice of the prostitutes who, when asked, regard clients as boring and think of sex work with tourists as entailing lower risks (re: health and money) than having paid sex with locals. Indeed, among prostitutes those who work with foreigners are afforded a higher status (tham ngan kap farang) rather than sex workers (sophenee) as former earning power provides greater autonomy to move into/out of prostitution in what Cohen calls open-ended prostitution. While Cohen may go too far to argue that prostitutes are risk-taking, small-scale entrepreneurs, his study shows that the tham ngan kap farang use of staged affection and attempts to solicit gifts as a girlfriend rather than cash for services encourages a less sex-oriented relationship that can be continued through to post-visit correspondence and future remittances. Cohen suggests that prostitutes have agency, an ability to negotiate their image. The second challenge comes from how we incorporate into understanding the consumption of places (and their bodies) and the geographical imagination thereof, if the sex tourists are women. A growing phenomenon with its own monikers romance tourism, sugar mummies, sanky-panky and rent-a-dread a survey of lone women tourists to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic found that over 30 per cent had at least one sexual encounter with a local during their stay; 32 per cent of those having had sex on holiday in Jamaica had two to four encounters and 36 per cent more than five (Sanchez-Taylor, 2001). Similar possibilities for separation and liminality are at work with encounters usually being with younger, lower-class, black men, and only two-thirds reported using a condom. Because of the gender switch should we analyse sex tourism differently when it is conducted by women? Some feminist writers, such as Pruitt (cited in Pettman, 1997), suggest that we should as female sex tourism, it is claimed, shows womens ability to negotiate sexual encounters and reverse usual male/female dominance. Indeed, 60 per cent of respondents to Sanchez-Taylors survey admitted having paid money, bought meals or clothes for men, but none admitted to having had a relationship with a prostitute. More problematic still, many respondents argued that sex with Caribbean men made them feel valued and that it was natural, confirming stereotypes of black men as hypersexual and valuing sex with white women. The question, as asked of male sex tourists before, is whether these geographical imaginations, here obscuring the obvious buying power of the women and the fantasy racial image they hold of the men, legitimates prostitution over human dignity and makes money for the tourist entrepreneurs.
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Chapter 12: The cultural geography of consumption

Conclusion
I hope that this chapter has provided some ideas to think about the oftenheard concepts global culture or cultural imperialism. I hope too that the chapter has suggested that these concepts are problematic for despite their usual claims to homogeneity and inevitability, the world in which we live seems extremely diverse and possibly more so all the time, not least partly due to globalisation. True, there are global products sold by global companies aided by ubiquitous messages distributed through global media (tv, radio, Internet). But the reception of these goods and supporting imagery makes sense to most people only in relation to local meanings if a global culture has no memory, no local, no place, consumers do. A similar point can be made about tourists, and even sex tourists, for whom images of other places are constructed and whose presence will change local conditions. Whether tourists, like coffee drinkers on the London street, are aware of the images being produced for them, the landscapes being prepared on their behalf or even that they hold power over other cultures is difficult to ascertain. Activity 12.1 Think of a commodity chain and identify any ways in which you think it might contribute to growing equality or inequality between countries.

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities, you should be able to: critically evaluate concepts such as Cultural Imperialism, hybridity, commodity chains describe how developed and developing countries interact through consumption discuss how developed and developing countries interact through tourism.

Sample examination questions

1. Critically evaluate the argument that globalisation is the same as Westernisation. 2. Tourism is about adventure, escape and fantasy. How is the tourism experience staged for us and what scope is there for tourists and travellers to engage with their hosts?

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Notes

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Appendix 1: Sample examination paper

Appendix 1: Sample examination paper

Important note: This Sample examination paper reflects the examination and assessment arrangements for this course in the academic year 20102011. The format and structure of the examination may have changed since the publication of this subject guide. You can find the most recent examination papers on the VLE where all changes to the format of the examination are posted.

Time allowed: three hours. Candidates should answer THREE of the following NINE questions. All questions carry equal marks. 1. Outline the characteristics of the various approaches that have been made to understanding human geography since the mid-twentieth century. 2. Describe and evaluate the usefulness of either von Thunens theory of the location of agricultural production or Webers theory of the location of manufacturing activity. 3. Discuss the reasoning behind Huntingtons view that the main source of conflict after the Cold War will not be ideological or economic but cultural. 4. Why is it that so many people in the world are hungry, yet the worlds economic production systems seem ever more capable of supplying more than sufficient food? 5. In terms of resources, how far do you believe that markets really can respond to scarcity? 6. With reference to specific examples, explain why people migrate. 7. How far would you agree that cities in the developing world are now undergoing changes and difficulties that were felt in cities of the developed world a century ago? 8. Why is the notion of development such a complex issue? 9. International tourism is about adventure, escape and fantasy. Discuss in the light of the ethical considerations of imposing global culture.

END OF PAPER

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Appendix 2: Full list of Further reading

Appendix 2: Full list of Further reading

Books
Adelman, H. Modernity, Globalisation, Refugees and Displacement, in Ager, A. (ed.) Refugees: Perspectives on the Experience of Forced Migration. (Pinter, 1999) pp.83110. Agnew, J., A. Rogers and D. Livingstone (eds) Human Geography: An Essential Anthology. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996) [ISBN 9780631194613]. 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. (London; New York: Arnold, 1997) [ISBN 9780340677162]. Agnew, J. Geopolitics: Re-Visioning World Politics. (London: Routledge, 2003) second edition [ISBN 9780415310079]. Allen, J., D. Massey, A. Cochrane and J. Charlesworth Rethinking the Region. (London: Routledge, 1998) [ISBN 9780415168229]. Angotti, T. Metropolis 2000: Planning, Poverty and Politics. (London: Routledge, 1993) [ISBN 9780415081368]. Austin-Broos, D. Gay Nights and Kingston Town: representations of Kingston, Jamaica, in Watson, S. and K. Gibson (eds) Postmodern Cities and Spaces. (Cambridge, Mass.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1995) [ISBN 9780631194040]. Bannon, I. and P . Collier Natural Resources and Violent Conflict: Options and Actions. (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 2003) [ISBN 780821355039]. Bell, M., R. Butlin and M. Heffernan (eds) Geography and Imperialism 1820 1940. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995) [ISBN 9780719039348]. 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) [ISBN 9781864030631]. Blakely, E. and M. Snyder Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States. (Washington D.C.; Cambridge, Mass.: Brookings Institution Press, Lincoln Institute of Lan Policy c.1999) [ISBN 9780815710035]. Blomley, N. Law, Space, and the Geographies of Power. (New York; London: Guilford, c.1994) [ISBN 9780898624960]. Blunt, A. et al. (eds) Cultural Geography in Practice. (London: Arnold, 2003) [ISBN 9780340807705]. Boeri, S. Multiplicity: Uncertain States of Europe. (Milano: Skira, 2003) [ISBN 9788884911391]. Borja, J. and M. Castells Local and Global: Management of Cities in the Information Age. (London: Earthscan, 1997) [ISBN 9781853834417]. Burton, J. (1992) Don (Juanito) Duck and the Imperial-Patriarchal Unconscious: Disney Studios, the Good Neighbour Policy and the Packaging of Latin America, in Parker, A. et al. (eds) Nationalisms and Sexualities. (London: Routledge, 1992) [ISBN 9780415904339] pp.2141. Buzan, B. and R. Little International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) [ISBN 9780198780656]. Chorley, R.J. and P . Haggett (eds) Integrated Models in Geography. (London: Methuen, 1969) [ISBN 9780416290202]. Cloke, P ., C. Philo and D. Sadler Approaching Human Geography: An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Debates. (London: Paul Chapman, 1991) [ISBN 9780898624908]. Cohen, R. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. (UCL Press, 1999). Cohen, E. Thai Tourism: Hill Tribes, Islands and Open Ended Prostitution. (Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus Press, c.2001) [ISBN 9789748496672]. 227

09 Human geography Corbridge, S. Third World Debt, in Desai, V . and R. Potter The Companion to Development Studies. (London: Hodder Education, 2007) second edition [ISBN 9780340889145] pp.47780. Corbridge, S.E. and G.A. Jones Wither Urban Bias: The Thesis, Its Critics, Its Influence, and Implications for Poverty Reduction, Department Research Papers in Environmental and Spatial Analysis No. 99., 2005, LSE [ISBN 0753018284]. Dalby, S. Geopolitics and Global Security: Culture, identity and the pogo syndrome, in OTuathail, G. and S. Dalby, (eds) Rethinking Geopolitics. (New York: Routledge, 1998) [ISBN 9780415172516]. Daviron, B. and S. Stefano Ponte The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise of Development. (London: Zed Books, 2005) [ISBN 9781842774571 (pbk)]. Davis, M. The City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles. (London: Verso, 1990) [ISBN 9781844675685]. de Soto, H. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Works in the West and Fails Just About Everywhere Else. (Black Swan, 2001). Dicken, P ., J. Peck and A. Tickell Unpacking the Global in Lee, R. and J. Wills (eds) Geographies of Economies. (London: Arnold; New York: Wiley, 1997) [ISBN 9789996512803]. Dicken, P . Global Shift: Transforming the World Economy. (Sage Publications Ltd, 2003) fourth edition [ISBN 9780761971498]. Dodds, K. Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire. (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2002) [ISBN 9781860647703]. Driver, F. Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire. (Oxford; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001) [ISBN 9780631201120]. Ehrlich P .R. and A.H. Ehrlich The Population Explosion. (New York; London: Touchstone, 1991, c.1990). Ehrlich P . The Population Bomb. (River City, MA: River City Press, 1975) [ISBN 978087156093]. Escobar, A. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995) [ISBN 9780691001029]. Flowerdew, R. and D. Martin (eds) Methods in Human Geography. (Harlow; New York: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005) second edition [ISBN 9780582473218]. Fotheringham, A.S., C. Brunsdon and M. Charlton Quantitative Geography: Perspective on Spatial Data Analysis. (London: Sage, 2000) [ISBN 9780761959489]. Fujita, M., P . Krugman and A.J. Venables The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions and International Trade. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001) [ISBN 9780262561471]. Garreau, J. Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. (New York: Anchor Books, 1992) [ISBN 9780385424349]. Gilbert, A.G. The Latin American City. (Latin America Bureau, 1998) revised and expanded edition [ISBN 9780853459385]. Gilbert A.G. The urban revolution, in Gwynne, R.N. and C. Kay (eds) Latin America transformed. (Harlow: Hodder Arnold, 2004) pp.93116. Goldsmith, E. and J. Mander (eds) The Case Against the Global Economy. (London: Earthscan, 2001) [ISBN 9780871568656]. Graham, S. and S. Marvin Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. (London: Routledge, 2001)[ISBN 0415189640]. Gregory, D. Ideology, Science and Human Geography. (London: Hutchinson, 1978) [ISBN 9780312404772]. Gregory, D. The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004) [ISBN 9781577180906].

228

Appendix 2: Full list of Further reading Haggett, P . Geography: A Global Synthesis. (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2001) [ISBN 9780582320307 (pbk)]. Harvey, D. Social Justice and the City. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, c.1973) [ISBN 9780801816888]. Harvey, D. The Condition of Postmodernity. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989) [ISBN 9780631162940 ]. Harvey, D. Spaces of Hope. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000) [ISBN 9780520225787]. Harvey, D. The New Imperialism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) [ISBN 9780199278084]. Harvey, D. Spaces of Global Capitalism. (London: Verso, 2006) [ISBN 9781844675500]. Heffernan, M. The Meaning of Europe: Geography and Geopolitics. (London: Edward Arnold, 1998)[ISBN 9780340580189]. Hirst, P . and G. Thompson Globalization in Question: the International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance. (Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 1999) [ISBN 9780745621630]. Holston, J. The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989) [ISBN 9780226349794]. Huntington, S. The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order. (London: Simon & Schuster, 1997) [ISBN 9780684844411]. Ibelings, H. Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalisation. (Rotterdam: Netherlands Architecture Institute, c.2002) [ISBN 9789056622671]. Jackson, K.T. The Crab Grass Frontier: The Suburbanisation of the United States. (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) second edition [ISBN 9780195132878]. Jacobs, J. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. (New York: Random House, 2002) [ISBN 9780679600473]. Jones, G.A. Imaginative Geographies of Latin America, in Swanson, P . (ed.) Companion to Latin American Studies. (Edward Arnold, 2003). Jones, G.A. Slums, in Harrison, P ., S. Pile and N. Thrift (eds) Patterned Ground: ecologies and geographies of nature and culture. (London: Reaktion Press, 2004) [ISBN 9781861891815] pp.190192. Kaplan, R. The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post-Cold War. (New York: Vintage, 2001)[ISBN 9780375707599]. King, A.D. Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture, Urbanism, Identity. (London: Spon, 2004) [ISBN 9780415196192]. King, R., G. Lazaridis and C. Tsardanidis (eds) Eldorado or Fortress? Migration in Southern Europe. (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1999) [ISBN 9780312226152]. Kirby, A. What did you do in the War, Daddy? in Godlewska, A. and N. Smith (eds) Geography and Empire. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) [ISBN 9780631193852]. Kitchin, R. and N. Tate Conducting Research into Human Geography. (Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2000) [ISBN 9780582297975]. Knox, P . and S. Marston (eds) Human Geography: Places and Regions in Global Context. (Longman, 2009) fifth edition [ISBN 9780321580023]. Knox, P .L. and P .J. Taylor (eds) World Cities in a World System. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) [ISBN 9780521484701]. Koolhaas, R. Harvard City Project (2001): Lagos, in Koolhaas, R. Mutations. (Barcelona: Actar Books, 2001) [ISBN 9788495273512]. Koser, K. and N. Al-Ali New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home. (Routledge, 2002). Koser, K. and H. Lutz The New Migration in Europe: Contexts, Constructions and Realities, in Koser, K. and H. Lutz (eds) The New Migration in Europe: Social Constructions and Social Realities. (Macmillan, 1998) pp.117. Krugman, P . For Richer, New York Times, 20 October 2002 http://faculty.pnc. edu/arw/gbg344/For%20Richer.htm

229

09 Human geography Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (University of Chicago Press, 1962). Lawson, V . Making Development Geography. (London: Hodder Arnold, 2007) [ISBN 9780340809648]. Limb, M. and C. Dwyer Qualitative Methodologies for Geographers: Issues and Debates. (London: Arnold, 2002) [ISBN 9780340742259]. Livingstone, D. The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) [ISBN 9780631185864]. Livingstone, D. British Geography 15001900, in Johnston, R.J. and M. Williams (eds) A Century of British Geography. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) [ISBN 9780197262863]. Lutz, W., W.C. Sanderson and S. Scherbov The End of World Population Growth in the 21st Century: New Challenges for Human Capital Formation and Sustainable Development. (London: Earthscan, 2004) [ISBN 9780631185864]. Lynch, K. The Image of the City. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960) [ISBN 9780262620017]. Mackinder, H.J. Britain and the British Seas. (London: 1902). Massey, D. Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of Production. (New York: Routledge, 1995) [ISBN 9780415912969]. Massey, D. For Space. (Los Angeles; London: Sage, 2004) [ISBN 9781412903622]. McDowell, L. Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1999) [ISBN 9780816633944]. Meadows, D. et al. Limits to Growth. (MIT Press, 1972). Milanovic, B. Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) [ISBN 978069130514]. Mitchell, D. The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. (New York: Guilford Press, 2003) [ISBN 9781572308473]. Mumford, L. The Culture of Cities. (San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1996) [ISBN 0156233010]. Myers, N. and J. Simon Scarcity or Abundance? A Debate on the Environment. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994) [ISBN 9780393035902]. ORiordan, T. (ed.) Environmental Science for Environmental Management. (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2000) [ISBN 9780582218895]. OTuathail, G. Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space. (London: Routledge, 1996) [ISBN 9780816626038]. OTuathail, G., S. Dalby and P . Routledge The Geopolitics Reader. (London: Routledge, 1999) [ISBN 9780415341486]. Peet, R. Radical Geography: Alternative Viewpoints on Contemporary Social Issues. (Chicago: Maaroufa Press, c1977) [ISBN 0884250067]. Peet, R. Modern Geographical Thought. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998) [ISBN 9781557863782]. Perrons, D. Globalisation and Social Change: People and Places in a Divided World. (London: Routledge, 2005) [ISBN 9780415266963]. Piore, M. and C. Sabel The Second Industrial Divide. (New York: Basic Books, 1984) [ISBN 9780465075614]. Putnam, R. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. (New York; London: Simon and Schuster, 2001) [ISBN 9780743203043]. Richards, T. The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and Fantasy of Empire. (London: Verso, 1993) [ISBN 0860914003; 9780860914006]. Robinson, G.M. Methods and Techniques in Human Geography. (New York: J. Wiley, c.1998)[ISBN 9780471962311]. Rodrik, D. The New Global Economy and Developing Countries: Making Openness Work. (Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1999) [ISBN 9781565170278]. 230

Appendix 2: Full list of Further reading Rose, G. Feminism and Geography: The Limits to Geographical Knowledge. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993) [ISBN 9780816624188]. Roy, A. and N. AlSayyad (eds) Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin American and South Asia. (Lexington Books, 2004). Sachs, J.D. and F. Larrain Macroeconomics in the Global Economy. (New York; London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993) [ISBN 9780131022522]. Sambale, J. Nonprofits in Los Angeles: between peace-keeping and employment, in Eick, V ., M. Mayer and J. Sambale (eds) From Welfare to Work: Nonprofits and the Workfare State in Berlin and Los Angeles. (Free University of Berlin, 2005) pp.8186. http://workfare-city.lai.fu-berlin.de/ fileadmin/workfare-city/PDF/2003_WP1.pdf Sassen, S. Guests and Aliens. (The New Press, 1999). Sassen, S. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) [ISBN 9780691070636]. Scott, A.J. (ed.) Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) [ISBN 9780199252305]. Scott, J. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1998). [ISBN 9780300078152] especially Chapter 4. Sharp, J. Condensing the Cold War: Readers Digest and American Identity. (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) [ISBN 9780816634156]. Shaw, M. Theory of the Global State: Globality as Unfinished Revolution. (Oxford; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000) [ISBN 9780521597302]. Smith, N. American Empire: Roosevelts Geographer and the Prelude to Globalisation. (Berkeley: California Press, 2003) [ISBN 9780520243385]. Smith, N. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. (London: Routledge, 1996) [ISBN 9780415132541]. Smith, N. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) [ISBN 9780631136859]. Soja, E. Postmodern Geography. (London: Verso, 1989) [ISBN 9780860919360]. Soja, E. Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) [ISBN 9780860919360]. Sorkin, M. (ed.) Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992) [ISBN 9780374523145]. Stanback Jr., T.M. The New Suburbanization: Challenge to the Central City. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991) [ISBN 9780813380513]. Stiglitz, J. Globalisation and its Discontents. (London: Penguin, 2002) [ISBN 9780393324396]. Storper, M. The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. (New York: Guilford Press, 1997) [ISBN 9781572303157]. Taylor, P . and C. Flint Political Geography: World Economy, Nation-State and Locality. (Harlow: Pearson Prentice Hall, c.2007) fourth edition [ISBN 9780582357334]. Wackernagel, M. and W. Rees Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. (Gabriola Island, BC; Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1996) [ISBN 9780865713123]. Whyte, W.H. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. (New York: Project for Public Spaces, 2001, c.1980) [ISBN 9780970632418]. World Bank, 1997. Expanding the Measure of Wealth: Indicators of Environmentally Sustainable Development. www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSServlet? pcont=details&e id=000009265_3971113150949. World Resource Institute, 2005. World Resources 2005, The Wealth of the Poor: Managing Ecosystems to Fight Poverty. www.wri.org Zukin, S. The Culture of Cities. (Cambridge, Mass.; Oxford: Blackwell, c.1995) [ISBN 9781557864376].

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Journals
Appadurai, A. Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy, Theory, Culture and Society, (7) 1990, pp.295310. Arnold, D. Illusory Riches: Representations of the Tropical World, 18401950, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 21(1) 2000. Barnes, T. The Rise (and Decline) of American Regional Science: Lessons for the New Economic Geography?, Journal of Economic Geography, (4) 2004. 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. Beaverstock, J., R. Smith and P . Taylor World-City Network: A New Metageography?, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 90(1) 2000, pp.12334. Beaverstock, J.V ., P . Hubbard and J.R. Short Getting Away With It? Exposing the Geographies of the Super-Rich, Geoforum, (35) 2004, pp.40107. Becker, A. and T. Havinga Asylum applications in the European Union, Journal of Refugee Studies, 11(3) 1998, pp.24566. Birkbeck, C. Self-Employed Proletarians in an Informal Factory: The Case of Calis Garbage Dump, World Development, 6(9/10) 1978, pp.117385. Bonnett, A. Geography as the World Discipline: Connecting Popular and Academic Geographical Imaginations, Area, 35(1) 2003. Burgess, S. and D. Wilson Ethnic Segregation in Englands Schools, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, (30) 2005, pp.2036. Cook, I. Follow the Thing: Papaya, Antipode, (36) 2004, pp.64264. Cook, I. and P . Crang The World on a Plate: Culinary Culture, Displacement and Geographical Knowledges, Journal of Material Culture 1(2) 1996, pp.13153. Corbridge, S. Beneath the Pavement Only Soil: The Poverty of Post Development, Journal of Development Studies, 34(1) 1998, pp.13848. Cosgrove, D. Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, (10) 1985, pp.4562. 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 Geographes, 87(2) 1997, pp.33045. Curtis White, K.J. and A.M. Guest Community Lost or Transformed? Urbanisation and Social Ties, City and Community, 2(3) 2003, pp.23959. Dalby, S. American security discourse: the persistence of geopolitics, Political Geography Quarterly, 9(2) 1990 pp.17188. Dalby, S. The Environment as Geopolitical Threat: Reading Robert Kaplans Coming Anarchy, Ecumene, 3(4) 1996, pp.47296. Dalby, S. Critical geopolitics: discourse, difference and dissent, Environment and Planning D, (9) 1999, pp.26183. Dear, M. and S. Flusty Postmodern Urbanism, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 88(1) 1998, pp.5072. Dick, H.W. and P .J. Rimmer Beyond the Third World City: The New Urban Geography of South-east Asia, Urban Studies, 35(12) 1998. 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. Duncan, J. and D. Ley Structural Marxism in Human Geography: a critical assessment, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (72) 1982. 232

Appendix 2: Full list of Further reading Easterly, W. How Did Heavily Indebted Poor Countries become Heavily Indebted? Reviewing Two Decades of Debt Relief, World Development, 30(10) 2002, pp.1677696. Edwards, M. The Irrelevance of Development Studies, Third World Quarterly (11) 1989, pp.11635. Entrikin, N. Contemporary Humanism in Geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (66) 1976. Fawole, W.A. A Continent in Crisis: Internal Conflicts and External Interventions in Africa, African Affairs, (103) 2004, pp.297303. Fass, S. Innovations in the Struggle for Self-Reliance: The Hmong Experience in the United States, International Migration Review, 20(2) 1986, pp.35180. Faye, M.L., J.W. McArthur, J. Sachs and T. Snow The Challenges Facing Landlocked Developing Countries, Journal of Human Development, 5(1) 2004. Fox, P .S. Images in Geography Great Expectations, Geography, 90(1) 2005, pp.317. Friedmann, J. The World City Hypothesis, Development and Change, 17(1) 1986, pp.6983. 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. Gold, J.R. Image and Environment: The Decline of Cognitive-Behaviourialism in Geography and Reasons for its Regeneration, Geoforum, (23) 1992. Golledge, R.G. Misconceptions, Misrepresentations and Misunderstandings in Behavioural Geography, Environment and Planning A, (13) 1981. 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. Golledge, R.G. and H. Timmermanns Applications of Behavioural Research on Spatial Problems I Cognition, Progress in Human Geography, (14) 1990. Gordon, I. and P . McCann Industrial Clusters: Complexes, Agglomeration and/ or Social Networks, Urban Studies, (37) 2000, pp.51332. Gregory, D. Human Agency and Human Geography, Transactions Institute of British Geographers, (6) 1981. Guterson, D. No Place like Home: On the Manicured Streets of a MasterPlanned Community, Harpers Magazine, November 1992, pp.5564. Gwynne, R. Globalisation, Commodity Chains and Fruit Exporting Regions in Chile, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 90(2) 1999, pp.21125. Hadlaw, J. The London Underground Map: Imagining Modern Time and Space, Design Issues, 19(1) 2003. Hannerz, U. Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture, Theory, Culture & Society, (7) 1990, pp.23751. Harley, J.B. Rereading the Maps of the Columbian Encounter, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 82(3) 1992. Harris, J. and M. Todaro Migration, Unemployment and Development: a two-sector analysis, American Economic Review, (60) 1970, pp.12642. Hart, G. Development Critiques in the 1990s: Culs De Sac and Promising Paths, Progress in Human Geography, (25) 2001, pp.60514. Harvey, D. From Managerialism to Entrepreneurship: The Transformation of Urban Governance in Late Capitalism, Geografiska Annaler, (71B) 1989, pp.317. Harvey, D. Population, Resources and the Ideology of Science, Economic Geography, 50(3) 1974, pp.25677. Heffernan, M. Geography, Cartography and Military Intelligence: The Royal Geographical Society and the First World War, Transactions Institute of British Geographers, (21) 1996.

233

09 Human geography Hens, L. and B. Nath The Johannesburg Conference, Environment, Development and Sustainability, 5(12) 2003, pp.739. Hewitt, K. Place Annihilation: Area Bombing and the Fate of Urban Places, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 73(2) 1983. Huntington, S. The Clash of Civilisations, Foreign Affairs, (72) 1993, pp.2249. Ingram, G.K. Patterns of Metropolitan Development: What Have We Learned?, Urban Studies, 35(7) 1998. Jacobs, J. Negotiating the Heart: Heritage, Development and Identity in Postimperial London, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (12) 1994, pp.75172. Jauch, H. Export-Processing Zones and the Quest for Sustainable Development: Southern African Perspectives, Environment and Urbanisation, 14(1) 2002, pp.10113. 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. 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. Jokisch, B. and J. Pribilsky The Panic to Leave: Economic Crisis and the New Emigration from Ecuador, International Migration, (40) 2002, pp.7499. Kaplan, R.D. The Coming Anarchy, The Atlantic Monthly, CCLXXIII(273) 1994, pp.4476. Kelly, P . The Political Economy of Local Labor Control in the Philippines, Economic Geography, 77(1) 2001. Kennan, G. (Mr X) The Sources of Soviet Conduct, Foreign Affairs, (25) 1947, pp.56682. Koskela, H. and R. Pain Revisiting Fear and Place: Womens Fear of Attack and the Built Environment, Geoforum, (31) 2000, pp.26980. Kropotkin, P . What Geography Ought to be, Nineteenth Century, (18) 1885. Lacoste, Y. An Illustration of Geographical Warfare: Bombing of the Dikes on the Red River, North Vietnam, Antipode 5(2) 1973, pp.113. Available online at: www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119675422/abstract Le Billon, P . and F. El Khatib From Free Oil to Freedom Oil: Terrorism, War and US Geopolitics in the Persian Gulf, Geopolitics, 9(1) 2004, pp.10937. Lehmann, D. An Opportunity Lost: Escobars Deconstruction of Development, Journal of Development Studies, 33(4) 1997, pp.56878. Lewis, W.A. Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour, Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies, (22) 1954, pp.13991. Lisle D. Consuming Danger: Reimagining the War/Tourism Divide, Alternatives, (25) 2000, pp.91116. Lloyd, M.G., J. McCarthy, S. McGreal and J. Berry Business Improvement Districts, Planning and Urban Regeneration, International Planning Studies, 8(4) 2003, pp.295321. Mackinder, H.J. The Round World and the Winning of the Peace, Foreign Affairs, 21(4) 1943. Malik, A. After Modernity: Contemporary Non-Western Cities and Architecture, Futures, (33) 2001, pp.87382. Marcuse, P . The Enclave, the Citadel and the Ghetto: What Has Changed in the Post-Fordist US City?, Urban Affairs Review, 33(2) 1998, pp.22864. 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. Marston, S. Making a Difference: Conflict over Irish Identity in the New York City St Patricks Day Parade, Political Geography, (21) 2002, pp.37392. 234

Appendix 2: Full list of Further reading Martin, M.T. Fortress Europe and Third World Immigration in the Post-Cold War Global Context, Third World Quarterly, 20(4) 1999, pp.82137. Martin, R. The New Geographical Turn in Economics: Some Critical Reflections, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 23(1) 1999, pp.6591. Massey, D. Flexible Sexism, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (9) 1991. May, J. A Little Taste of Something More Exotic, Geography, 81(1) 1996, pp.5764. May, J. In Search of Authenticity Off and On the Beaten Track, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (14) 1996, pp.70936. McEwan, C. Paradise or Pandemonium? West African Landscapes in the Travel Accounts of Victorian Women, Journal of Historical Geography, 22(1) 1996. McHaffie, P . Decoding the Globe: Globalism, Advertising and Corporate Practice, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (15) 1997 pp.7386. McNeill, D. Skyscraper Geography, Progress in Human Geography, 29(1) 2005, pp.4155. Mermin, J. US Intervention and the New World Order: Lessons From the Cold War and Post-Cold War cases, Political Studies Quarterly, (15) 1997, pp.77102. Mertenson, H. and J. McCarthy In General, No Serious Risk of Persecution: Safe Country of Origin Practices in Nine European States, Journal of Refugee Studies, 11(3) 1998, pp.30425. Munt, I. The Other Postmodern Tourist: Culture, Travel and the New Middle Classes, Theory, Culture and Society, (11) 1994, pp.10123. 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. OTuathail, G. An Anti-Geopolitical Eye: Maggie OKane in Bosnia, 199293, Gender, Place and Culture, 3(2) 1996, pp.17185. Parker, G. Not Glass but Diamond: An Evaluation of the Geopolitical World View of Saul B. Cohen, Geopolitics, 3(2) 1998, pp.11324. Pettman, J. Body Politics: International Sex Tourism, Third World Quarterly, 18(1) 1997, pp.93108. Political Geography, 21(5) 2002, Special Issue dedicated to Saul B. Cohen. Poon, J.P .H. Quantitative Methods: Not Positively Positivist, Progress in Human Geography, 29(6) 2005, pp.76672. Portes, A. and J. Borocz Contemporary Immigration: Theoretical Perspectives on its Determinants and Modes of Incorporation, International Migration Review, 23(3) 1989, pp.60630. Potter, R. Urbanisation in the Caribbean and Trends of Global ConvergenceDivergence, Geographical Journal, (159) 1993, pp.121. Ravenstein, E.G. The Laws of Migration, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 48(2) 1885, pp.167235. Relph, E. Humanism, Phenomenology and Geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (67) 1977. Renard, M-C. The Interstices of Globalisation: The Example of Fair Coffee, Sociologia Ruralis, 39(4) 1999, pp.484500. Robinson, J. Global and World Cities: A View from off the Map, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 26(3) 2002, pp.53154. 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. Rostow, W.W. The Take-Off Into Self-Sustained Growth, Economic Journal, 1956, pp.2548. 235

09 Human geography Samers, M. Immigration, ethnic minorities, and social exclusion in the European Union: A Critical Perspective, Geoforum, 29(2) 1998, pp.12344. Sanchez-Taylor, J. Dollars are a Girls Best Friend? Female Tourists Sexual Behaviour in the Caribbean, Sociology, 35(3) 2001, pp.74964. Satterthwaite, D. The Millennium Development Goals and Urban Poverty Reduction: Great Expectations and Nonsense Statistics, Environment and Urbanisation, 15(2) 2003, pp.18190. Schaefer, F.K. Exceptionalism in Geography: A Methodological Examination, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (43) 1953. Scientific American. Special Issue, September 2005, Crossroads for Planet Earth. (Includes articles by leading writers in sustainability debates.) Sen, A. Food and Freedom, World Development, (17) 1989, pp.76981. Sen, A. Democracy as a Universal Value, Journal of Democracy, 10 (3) 1999, pp.317. Shidharan, K. G-15 and SouthSouth Cooperation: Promise and Performance, Third World Quarterly, 19(3) 1998, pp.35773. Sloan, G. Sir Halford Mackinder: The Heartland Theory Then and Now, Journal of Strategic Studies, 22(23) 1999. Smith, M.D. The Empire Filters Back: Consumption, Production, and the Politics of Starbucks Coffee, Urban Geography, 17(6) 1996, pp.50224. Smith, N. New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy, Antipode, 34(3) 2002, pp.42750. Smith, N. The Endgame of Globalisation, Political Geography, 25(6) 2006, pp.114. Soja, E. Writing the City Spatially, City, 7(3) 2003, pp.26980. Standing, G. Global Feminisation Through Flexible Labour: A Theme Revisited, World Development, 27(3) 1999, pp.583602. Stoddart, D.R. To Claim the High Ground: Geography for the End of the Century, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, (12) 1987. 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. 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.30620. Sutcliffe, B. World Inequality and Globalisation, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 20(1) 2004, pp.1537. Sylvester, C. Development Studies and Postcolonial Studies: Disparate Tales of the Third World, Third World Quarterly, 20(4) 1999, pp.70321. Tacoli, C. Changing ruralurban interactions in sub-Saharan Africa and their impact on livelihoods, IIED Briefing Paper Series on RuralUrban Interactions and Livelihoods Strategies, 2002; www.iied.org/pubs/pdf/ full/10505IIED.pdf Taylor, I. Advice is Judged by Results, Not by Intentions: Why Gordon Brown is Wrong About Africa, International Affairs, 81(2) 2005, pp.299310. Thrift, N. The Future of Geography, Geoforum, (33) 2002. Tomlinson, B. Cultural Globalisation: Placing and Displacing the West, European Journal of Development Research, 8(2) 1996, pp.2235. Tuan, Y.-F. Humanistic Geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (66) 1976. Turner, J.F.C. Barriers and Channels for Housing Development in Modernising Countries, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 33, 1967 pp.167 81. 236

Appendix 2: Full list of Further reading Valtonen, K. Resettlement of Middle Eastern Refugees in Finland: The Elusiveness of Integration, Journal of Refugee Studies, 11(1) 1998, pp.38 60. Voigt-Graf, C. Towards a Geography of Transnational Spaces: Indian Transnational Communities in Australia, Global Networks, 4(1) 2004, pp.2549. Wacquant, L. Urban Marginality in the Coming Millennium, Urban Studies, 36(10) 1999, pp.163947. Weber, M. Competing Political Visions: WTO Governance and Green Politics, Global Environmental Politics, 33(1) 2001, pp.92113. White, E. Kwame Nkrumah: Cold War Modernity, Pan African Ideology and The Geopolitics of Development, Geopolitics, 8(2) 2003, pp.99124. World Bank, 2001. Cities Without Slums: Action Plan for Moving Slum Upgrading to Scale. (See www.worldbank.org/) 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.

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