The Dictionary of Human Geography (108 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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irredentism
The claim by the government, or by political groups, of one country that a minority living in a neighbouring country belongs instead to it because of historical and cultural connections. Though at times the minority may live in peace within the neigh bouring country, in other contexts irredentist movements may mount a campaign to ?unite? the minority, leading to border disputes, active guerilla like conflict (as in Northern (NEW PARAGRAPH) Ireland), and even war. The term originated from a disputed part of Austria in 1871, which Italian nationalists called Italia irredenta, or unredeemed Italy. The 1990s war in the for mer Yugoslavia was driven by a combination of irredentist claims. cf (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Ambrosio (2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
isolines
Lines on a map describing the inter section of a real or hypothetical surface with one or more horizontal planes. On a topo graphic map, typically compiled from aerial photographs by stereocompilation (Lyon, Falkner and Bergen, 1995), each isoline, or contour, represents a constant elevation, and because the vertical interval is constant, their relative spacing is a readily visualized indicator of slope. On a statistical map, isolines may be threaded manually through a network of data points or plotted automatically by an interpol ation algorithm, which provides comparative consistency and gives the map author some control over the appearance and reliability of the map (Schneider, 2001). Spot heights are occasionally added to emphasize local minima and maxima. mm (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Yang and Hodler (2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
just war
A war whose cause and conduct can be ethically justified (see ethics). The desire to specify the conditions under which it is morally acceptable to resort to military vioLence has a long and complicated history, in which religion, geopolitics and law have all played central roles. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Christianity has embraced both a presump tion against war and a belief that war may be justified to spread or defend the faith (the Crusades) or to combat evil. In Islam, the concept of jihad involves a struggle against evil, but the ?greater jihad? is a personal, spir itual struggle, while the ?lesser jihad? is re served for armed struggles to spread or defend the faith (Devji, 2005). Much of the rhetoric surrounding the ?war on terror? (see terrorism) has traded on these twin versions of a supposedly ?holy war?, Christian and Muslim, but within both theological traditions geopolitical and juridical issues have also loomed large. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Both theological traditions have invoked a geographicaL imaginary in which the loca tions of the sacralized ?heartland? or home land and that of the enemy Other are identified. Modern geopolitics has often ap propriated the language of Just War traditions too, but typically in a secularized form in order to legitimize conventional wars and, more re cently, military interventions in the name of what Chomsky (1999) calls a ?new military humanism? (cf. Douzinas, 2003; see also hu manism). But Megoran (2008) objects that, while criticaL geopoLitics has no hesitation in advancing all sorts of normative claims and moral judgements, it has conspicuously failed to interrogate its own ethical presuppositions in any systematic and detailed fashion. In op posing some wars and endorsing others, prac titioners of critical geopolitics have implicitly adopted the categories of just war reasoning, he argues, but ironically failed to subject them to critical scrutiny. This has a number of con sequences, Megoran concludes, the most im portant of which is a silence over the production of spaces of non violence and ?a vision of peace and justice that explicitly es chews the resort to force? (p. 494). This is true of human geography more generally, how ever, which has long been more invested in war than in peace (cf. Wisner, 1986). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Modern juridical doctrines of just war distin guish (1) law governing when a war may be fought (jus ad bellum) from (2) law governing how a war is to be conducted (jus in bello). In general, the first requires a just cause (for example, self defence, not aggression), a declaration by a legitimate authority, a right intention (so that the motivation must be moral rather than, for example, economic: cf. resource wars) and a reasonable prospect of success. The second requires, among other things, discrimination between military targets and civilians, the proportional use of force, and the humane treatment of prisoners of war and civilians (cf. Gregory, 2006). These two sets of requirements raise considerable philosophical and legal issues, and several commentators insist that they need to be sus pended in situations of ?supreme emergency? (Walzer, 2000) (cf. exception, space of). But they have been put under further strain by new forms of war and their geographies, includ ing the ?war on terror?, which raise complex questions about sovereign power and terri tory, and which often refuse any clear distinc tion between military and non military spaces. The rhetorical power of a ?just war? depends on more than legal arguments, however: it also depends on the mobilization of imaginative geographies to legitimize the identification and characterization of the enemy which is, of course, where theological and geopolitical claims so often make their most forceful appearance (Falah, Flint and Mamadouh, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Megoran (2008). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
just-in-time production
A system of manu facturing in which inputs are supplied and outputs are delivered very soon after demand for a finished good has been registered. Perfected by Japanese automobile producers, and since emulated by North American and European assemblers, this set of practices has also diffused to other industrial sectors such as computer manufacturing. As one objective is to reduce the quantity of produ cers? capital tied up in inventories of parts and finished products, producers no longer keep large buffer stocks on hand. This has the consequent effect of forcing lower defect rates in parts supplied, and hence improves overall quality. Because suppliers are able to meet buyers? varying requirements (in both number and type) at short notice, the system (NEW PARAGRAPH) allows manufacturers to respond more flexibly to changing market demands (see, more generally, flexible accumulation and post fordism). Adoption of such practices may exert an agglomeration effect, bringing buyers and suppliers closer together to facili tate rapid delivery at short notice, but in any case transforms the dynamics of the commodity chain. Msg
Kantianism
A phiLosophy developed by Immanuel Kant (1724 1804) (see Kuehn, 2001). Kant?s conception of the nature of geography and its location within the system of knowledge as a whole provided the basis for a series of major disagreements in the twentieth century discipline (see May, 1970). Kant considered that knowledge could be classified in two ways: either logically or physically (cf. classification): ?The logical classification collects all individual items in separate classes according to similarities of morphological features; it could be called something like an ??archive?? and will, if pur sued, lead to a ??natural system?? ? (Buttner and Hoheisel, 1980). In a ?natural system?, Kant noted, ?I place each thing in its class, even though they are to be found in different, widely separated places? (cited in Hartshorne, 1939). He assumed this to be the method of all the sciences except history and geography, which depended, in contrast, on physical classification. The physical classification col lects individual items that ?belong to the same time or the same space?. In this connection, Kant asserted: (NEW PARAGRAPH) History differs from geography only in the consideration of time and [space]. The for mer is a report of phenomena that follow one another (Nacheinander) and has refer ence to time. The latter is a report of phe nomena beside each other (Nebeneinander) in space. History is a narrative, geography a description. Geography and history fill up the entire circumference of our perceptions: geography that of space, history that of time. (Kant, cited in Hartshorne, 1939) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Although Kant?s views on geography were broadly similar to those of architects of the modern discipline like von Humboldt and Hettner, they appear to have had ?no direct influence? other than ?as a form of confirm ation? (Hartshorne, 1958; but cf. Buttner and Hoheisel, 1980). Indeed, they were not explicitly endorsed in any programmatic statement of the scope of geography in English until Hartshorne?s account of The nature of geography (1939), which accepted that geography?s basic task was essentially Kantian: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geography and history are alike in that they are integrating sciences concerned with studying the world. There is, therefore, a universal and mutual relation between them, even though their bases of integration are in a sense opposite geography in terms of earth spaces, history in terms of periods of time. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Others were more sceptical. Blaut (1961) con cluded that, for Kant, (NEW PARAGRAPH) Knowledge about the spatial location of objects is quite distinct from knowledge about their true nature and the natural laws governing them. The latter sorts of knowledge are eternal and universal, are truly scientific [whereas] spatial and tem poral co ordinates are separate and rather secondary attributes of objects, and spatial and temporal arrangement of objects is not a matter for science. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Like Schaefer (1953), therefore, Blaut saw Kant as the originator of an exceptionaLism that was inimical to the explanations and gen eralizations (rather than mere ?descriptions?) required for geography to be reconstituted as a spatiaL science. That this was not a neces sary consequence was later demonstrated by Torsten Hagerstrand, who revitalized Kant?s distinction in order to demonstrate the possi bility of a recognizably scientific approach to physical orderings. Although time geography was predicated on a rejection of divisions between ?history? and ?geography?, ?time? and ?space?, the contrast that Hagerstrand drew between a conventional compositional approach and his own contextual approach paralleled that between ?logical? and ?physical? classifications (see contextuality). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Most of the foregoing formulations depended on Kant?s lectures on physicaL geography delivered from 1755 to 1796 and recovered from various notes, but other writers drew attention to Kant?s Critique of pure reason (1781) and its emphasis on ?the structuring activity of the thinking subject? to develop an alternative to spatial science: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Space is not something objective and real, nor is it a substance or an accident, or a relation, but it is subjective and ideal and (NEW PARAGRAPH) proceeds from the nature of the mind by an unchanging law, as a schema for co ordinating with each other absolutely all things externally sensed. (Kant, cited in Richards, 1974; emphasis added) (NEW PARAGRAPH) This stress upon ?the epistemic structuring of the world by the human actor was the essence of the Kantian heritage?, so it was claimed, and ?constitutes the common theme which has, in practice, been distilled from the variety of humanistic philosophies to which geographers of a subjectivist orientation have turned in their endeavour to transcend the dichotomy inherent in subject object relations? (Livingstone and Harrison, 1981a: see behaviouraL geography; humanistic geography). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Many of these endeavours might more properly be described as neo Kantian. Neo Kantianism emerged in Germany in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Whereas Kant had held the a priori to be ?externally fixed and eternally immutable? the ?unchan ging law? in Richard?s quotation above the neo Kantians rejected the vision of a unitary scientific method that this allowed. They sub stituted a key distinction between: (NEW PARAGRAPH) the cultural and historical sciences (the Geisteswissenschaften), which dealt with an intelligible world of ?non sensuous objects of experience?, which required inter pretation and understanding (verstehen), and which were thus concerned with the idiographic this was the focus of the ?Baden School?, which included Win delband and Rickert and (NEW PARAGRAPH) the natural sciences (the Naturwissenscahf ten), which dealt with the ?sensible world of science?, which required explanation (erklaren), and which were thus concerned with the nomothetic this was the focus of the ?Marburg school?, which included Cassirer. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Within human geography, neo Kantianism has been seen at work in the possibiLism of the early twentieth century French school of geography (Berdoulay, 1976), in the pro gramme of the chicago schooL of urban soci ology (Park completed a doctoral dissertation under Windelband: Entrikin, 1980), and in humanistic geography more generally (Jackson and Smith, 1984). In a still more fundamental sense, Entrikin (1984) proposed that Hartshorne?s view of the nature of geog raphy (above) incorporated a number of patently neo Kantian arguments, and that Cassirer?s writings might provide a means of reinvigorating geography?s various perspec tives upon space (see also Entrikin, 1977). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Until recently, most geographers limited their interest in Kant to his lectures on phys ical geography and his first critique, largely one suspects because of their interest in (or objections to) the scientificity of geographies underwritten by positivism. But several writers have since reflected on Kant?s second and third critiques, Critique of practical reason (1788) and Critique of judgement (1790 9). In the closing decades of the twentieth century there was a widespread (if often tacit) accept ance of an essentially Kantian distinction between three forms of knowledge or ?reason?. Following Habermas, for example, several writers associated the enLightenment project in particular and modernity in general with the formation of three autonomous spheres (see table). (NEW PARAGRAPH) science truth and knowledge (NEW PARAGRAPH) cognitive instrumental rationality morality norms and justice (NEW PARAGRAPH) moral practical rationality art authenticity and beauty (NEW PARAGRAPH) aesthetic expressive rationality (NEW PARAGRAPH) The task of Habermas? version of criticaL theory was, in part, to re balance these three spheres: to guard against the inflation of ?science? (and the detachment of its expert culture from public scrutiny) which he believed was characteristic of capitaLism in the early and middle twentieth century; and against the inflation of the aesthetic that he saw within late twentieth century postmodernism (Ingram, 1987). Certainly, Kantian aesthetics played an important part in discussions of postmodern sensibilities in human geography, and particular attention was paid to the aestheticization of politics to be found in versions of both modernism and postmodernism (Harvey, 1989b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) More recently still, there been a renewed interest in Kant?s view of cosmopoLitanism set out in ?Perpetual Peace: a philosophical sketch? (1795). To some critics, it is frankly bizarre to juxtapose Kant?s essay with the ethnocentrism (at best) and at worst the ?racisms and ethnic prejudices? of his lectures on physical geography (Harvey, 2000a, p. 544). But Harvey also recognized that the ?contrast between the universality of Kant?s (NEW PARAGRAPH) cosmopolitanism and ethics and the awkward and intractable peculiarities of his geography is important? precisely because it opens a space for a crucial ?dialectic between cosmo politanism and geography? (Harvey, 2000a, pp. 535, 559). Other critics have mapped that space in radically different terms. Since the end of the coLd war, and even more in sistently after 9/11, several hostile and usually (though by no means invariably) American commentators have described contemporary europe as in thrall to Kant and his vision of ?perpetual peace?, while leaving the USA the supreme task of bringing order to the Hobbe sian world of ?failed states? and collapsing states, of warlords and transnational terror ism beyond its boundaries. That said, Elden and Bialasiewicz (2006, p. 644) argue that ?the characterisation of a ??Kantian?? Europe, weak, complacent, and ??out of touch?? with current global realities, tells us more about the United States and its imagined role than it does about Europe?. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Buttner and Hoheisel (1980); May (1970); Elden and Bialasiewicz (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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