The Dictionary of Human Geography (129 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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innovation of such work resides in its willing ness to break with a notion of linearity that has characterized notions of modernity from Descartes to Hegel (see Duncan, 2002). At the same time, and in close analogy to other attempts to broaden analytical concepts, any gains achieved need to be measured against losses in clarity, argumentative bite and explanatory power: ?broadening? often also entails elements of diluting argumentative claims. In the case of ?modernity?, with (as we have seen) its already wide semantic field, the abandonment of linearity carries the risk of no longer being able critically to differentiate if, or to what extent, societies (or elements thereof) can meaningfully be compared through the use of the conceptual apparatus developed in conjuncture with the term ?mod ernity?. In the absence of such comparative yardsticks, how can scholars translate findings from one geographical locale to another? (NEW PARAGRAPH) In fact, ?translation? may well be an apt term to use within modern discouRSES. Transla tions have always posed quite fundamental problems in that acts of translation tend to reduce a semantic multitude to more circum spect and singular set of equivalences. Attrib uting modernity to this process at least has the practical virtue of ensuring compatibility at a relatively accessible point in an argument. Traditional notions of modernity would, for instance, have firmly placed practices associ ated with or emanating from ?witchcraft? as being either pre modern or outside the realm of the modern by presupposing incompatibil ity between the two terms. The very thought of ?alternative modernities? (Gaonkar, 2001) undermines this robust principle. By ensuring that translation between different practices can always involve or lead to a broadening of categories or non linear historical trajectories, the notion of ?the modern? risks the loss of normative aspects associated with modernity as an emancipatory and, in the words of JÂÂ81rgen Habermas, an ?unfinished? project (see crmcaL theory). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Arguably, many debates currently taking place in the first decade of the new millennium labour with precisely this point: the possibility of the universality of modern dreams, aspirations and normatively inspired practices. Can we think of ?modernity? in the absence of pre formulated yardsticks, or clearly associated practices? Whether we invoke the notion of a ?clash of cultures?, a re investigation of notions of ?toler ance? or insist on established, modern norms (especially in the legal context) in the face of challenges, we are talking about modernity and its survival into an increasingly less certain fu ture. Modernity may yet prove its most endu ring qualities by remembering its own inherent insistence on the importance of the ?new?. In geographical terms, this ?new? translates into an insistence on the importance not of preserving a status quo but of constant experimentation and improvement (Toulmin, 1990). In other words, it involves a resolve to preserve and produce alternative spaces of modernity, rather than spaces of alternative modernities. us (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Berman (1983); Gaonkar (2001); Minca (2007a); Venn and Featherstone (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
modernization
Often conflated with devel opment in general and Westernization in particular, modernization describes processes unleashed by the transformation of traditional societies into capitalist ones or by their incorp oration through adaptation into an increas ingly globally operating form of capitaLism. If the former process is traditionally held to characterize the transformative processes at taching to Western societies in the context of the nineteenth century, it is the latter, non indigenous form of modernization that has come to dominate the world since the end of the Second World War. As such, notions of modernization partake in discourses of the evolutionary transformation of societies and are often deeply implicated in notions of pro gress, growth, liberalization and the diffusion of particular values. Up until fairly recently, such processes of modernization were thought to entail a clearly legible and often teLeo LogicaL register of changes in the economic, cultural, social and political sphere of societies undergoing transformation. Not so any more. Initially criticized for being too narrowly focused on economic forms of modernization and for disregarding the many different direct and indirect costs linked with modernization processes, attention has also moved to forms of contestation and resistance that accom pany and often undermine modernization processes (Scott, 1985; Nabudere, 1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH) More recently still, the term has been recast as reflexive modernization in the work of Ulrich Beck and others (cf. REFLExiviTy). Rather than following a preset and, indeed, general path (see MODERNlTy), modernization is now thought to entail the ability constantly to adapt and thus to create a ?second modernity'. Where older modernization discourses argued with reference to timeless and abstract prin ciples, a newer and reflexive practice seeks constantly to review its goals and practices in dialogue with incoming information. Key in this attempt is the geographical term ?bound ARy?, which is seen less as a fixed entity than a conscious practice (Shields, 2006): just as boundaries emerge from processes of negoti ation and remain open to future negotiations, reflexive modernization both relies on the boundedness of its practices while acknow ledging their potential for change. Structurally similar to recent attempts to broaden the notion of ?modernity' by incorporating non Western practices, reflexive modernization thus constitutes a discursive process, rather than marking the outcome of discursive prac tices, as older notions of modernization had attempted to do (see discourse). It is hence no surprise to see the term ?reflexive modern ization' often being conflated with the notions of ?third way' or ?third (or ?new') modernity'. Likewise, the realization that modernity may well have become a problem in its own right shares the key assumption of a required dialo gical openness with reflexive notions of mod ernization. Principally, such problematization takes place through the recognition that unin tended consequences within industrial soci eties, which proliferate as Risks beyond the accepted certainties, are created within mod ernity. In this form, ?reflexive modernization' has been heralded by many as an agency orientated alternative to postmodern dis courses and attitudes (Beck, Bonss and Lau, (NEW PARAGRAPH) and is related to structuration THEORy (Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994). us (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Alexander (1996); Beck (1997); Galloway (2005); Gleeson (2000); Nabudere (1997); Shields (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
modifiable areal unit problem (maup)
A (NEW PARAGRAPH) particular form of ecological FALLAcy associated with the analysis of spatial data sets, in particular those in which data on indi vidual observation units (such as households) are aggregated into areal units (such as census tracts and counties) for analysis. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Robinson (1950) provided the classic expose of the maup for social scientists (see also Gehlke and Biehl, 1934), in which he showed that a high correlation between two variables (the percentage of the population who were African American and the percent age who were illiterate) at the state scale within the USA was not replicated at the indi vidual level; in other words, whereas the aggre gate data analysis showed that states with more African Americans also had more illiterates, leading to the ecological inference that African Americans were more likely than non African Americans to be illiterate, this strong claim could not be substantiated by analyses of individ ual level data. (The correlation coefficient for the state level analysis was 0.946, but for the individual level it was much smaller, at 0.203.) (NEW PARAGRAPH) The maup was introduced to the geographi cal literature by Openshaw (1977; see also Openshaw and Taylor, 1979), whose empirical studies corroborated and extended Robinson's. With one data set, for example, they showed that different aggregations (or regionalizations, since most geographical examples involve aggre gations into territorial blocks) could generate correlation coefficients covering almost the entire potential range from 1.0 to + 1.0 (in one example, the range found was 0.73 to + 0.98), although most distributions were lepto kurtic, with the majority of observed coefficients close to the median value. They showed that the problem is made up of two components. With the scale effect, there is a tendency for larger correlations to be associated with larger (and thus almost invariably a smaller number of) spa tial units. The aggregation effect refers to the large number of different ways in which individual units can be combined into a set of areal units usually with constraints such as size and contigu ity (Openshaw, 1982). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The maup is important in many areas of SPATIAL SCIENCE using qUANTITATIVE METHODS, because it indicates the need for caution in inferring a relationship between two variables based on a single aggregation at a particular scale: a result identified from one such analysis may not be replicated exactly in another. Openshaw and Taylor (1981) identified three possible responses to the maup: (NEW PARAGRAPH) it is an insoluble problem, and so can only be ignored; (NEW PARAGRAPH) it is a problem that can be assumed away, with the results obtained from the particu lar available data set being accepted as ?the real ones?; or (NEW PARAGRAPH) it is a very powerful analytical device for exploring various aspects of geography and spatial variations, since alternative regionalizations can be produced this allows the creation of both frequency dis tributions with which one regionalization can be compared and, in some cases, optimal regionalizations for particular pur poses (see CLASSIflCATION and regional ization). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Although the existence of the maup is widely recognized as posing a problem for much spatial analysis, in very many cases researchers have had to adopt either the first or the second of these positions because they are constrained by available data sources (especially those provided by censuses). Attempts have been made to develop method ologies that can take the maup into account and produce unbiased ecological estimates (as in the work of Holt, Steel, Tranmer and Wrigley, 1996, and King?s, 1997, classic volume on solving the ecological iNfERENCE problem; see also a recent overview in Swift, Liu and Uber, 2008), but few analysts have adopted the third of Openshaw and Taylor?s suggested responses, preferring to accept the outcome of one aggregation as providing a reliable estimate of the ?real? relationship. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The maup is not only an issue in spatial analysis: it is also relevant to a range of prac tical issues notably redistricting. Many electoral systems use territorially defined con stituencies, which comprise aggregations of smaller territorial units; UK Parliamentary constituencies, for example, are aggregations of contiguous local government electoral wards with a size constraint. Johnston and Rossiter (1982; see also Cirincione, Darling and O?Rourke, 2000) have shown that there is a large number of possible solutions to the constituency building problem in every area, which can produce different election results, so that the selection of a particular aggregation can not only lead to a particular outcome in one constituency (hence the widespread prac tice of gerrymandering in some countries), but can also contribute to considerable bias in election results, whereby not only is the per centage of seats won by a party disproportion ate to its share of the votes cast, but other parties with the same share of the votes might win very different shares of the seats (NEW PARAGRAPH) (Johnston, Pattie, Dorling and Rossiter, 2001: see electoral geography). Rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Openshaw (1982). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
money and finance
human geography was late in recognizing the geographical signifi cance of money and finance, with few at tempts to write geographies of money and finance much before the 1980s (for excep tions, see Conzen, 1975, 1977). However, since then a new sub field of geographical re search has emerged (Corbridge, Thrift and Martin, 1994; Leyshon and Thrift, 1997; Martin, 1999; Clark, 2005a). As this work has evolved, it has followed a similar trajectory to the wider discipline, with earlier work being influenced by more abstract economic and social theory, while more recent work has tended towards substantive, cultural accounts of the geographical consequences of money and finance. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The first systematic engagement with the geography of money and finance emerged from Marxist analyses of the broader dynam ics of capitalism, best exemplified by the work of David Harvey (1989b, 1999 [1982]). Marx drew attention to the role that money and finance played in the financial system within capitalism, which revolves around money and the social power that its posses sion delivers in a MARkET economy. Drawing on this insight, Harvey developed the concept of time space compression, which provided a propulsive element to earlier theories of a shrinking world, such as time space conver (NEW PARAGRAPH) GENCE and TIME SPACE DISTANCIATION. The social power of money increases the pace of life over time as part of a generalized process to reduce the turnover time of capital, and the faster realization of profits and incomes. This encourages the introduction of new space shrinking technologies, bringing in their wake the progressive dislocation of economic and political systems. Money has become ever more mobile and fungible, and is now the most heavily traded commodity in the global economy. The sheer weight of money in cir culation within and between financial markets has made governments more sensitive to their operation, and economic development has been destabilized by a series of serious finan cial crises in various parts of the world, in cluding LATIN AMERICA and Sub Saharan AfRlCA in the 1980s (Corbridge, 1993a), and South East Asia and Latin America (again) in the 1990s (Beaverstock and Doel, 2001; (NEW PARAGRAPH) Webber, 2001; Rock, 2002). These crises have often been caused by the movement of hOT MONEy, which moves in but, significantly, also out of economies at short notice in search of investment opportunities. Growing atten tion is being paid to such investors, such as hedge funds and pension funds, which control large volumes of capital in circulation within the global economy. For example, Clark (1999a) has argued that the current era is characterized by ?pension fund capitalism?. The rise of these institutions has coincided with the retreat of the state, particularly within Anglo American economies. As voters have demonstrated their unwillingness to pay the taxes that would fund social welfare pro grammes and public iNfRASTRUCTURE develop ment, so large institutional investors have moved in to fill the gap, footing the bill, but for private gain. This has implications not only for what kind of infrastructure is built, but also for how it is run. Similar arguments about the growing power and influence of the financial system have been made in a body of work that emerged in the early twenty first century, which has a focus on the process of financiali zation, which has focused on the ways in which money and finance has been colonizing eco nomic life, both in the boardroom (Froud, Sukhdev, Leaver and Williams, 2006) and in the hOUSEhOLd (Langley, 2004, 2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A second area of research has focused on the regional effects of money and finance, mainly through the impacts of the reorganization of the financial services industry. Since the 1970s, and working in parallel to, and com bination with, the process of financialization, there has been a process of neo liberalization that has brought about a wave of financial re regulation to economies in North America, Europe and South East Asia (Moran, 1991, 2003; Dymski, 1999). These developments have brought about an increase in retail finan cial services employment, and economic geog raphers have documented and explained these uneven geographies of growth (Leyshon, Thrift and Toomey, 1989; Richardson, Belt and Marshall, 2000) (see neo liberalism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A third area of work has focused on the urban dynamics of money. One strand of research has sought to explain the persistence of financial centres in an era of time space compression. Geographers have sought to explain why financial centres such as the City of London and New York continue to control the majority of the world?s financial activity (Thrift, 1994a; Agnes, 2000; Clark and Woj cik, 2001). The answer is to be found in the ways financial centres facilitate close interper sonal contact through episodes of co presence. This facilitates the rapid generation, capture interpretation and representation of business information (Boden and Molotch, 1995; Boden, 2000). The financial centre may there fore be seen as a collective way of coping with the vast amount of monetary information that circulates within the global economy. It is a centre of financial expertise founded in a com plex divisiON Of labour embodied in the skills of the workforce, technology, and textual ma terial (Thrift, 1994a), and which collectively generates and disseminates financial informa tion as well as interpretations and narratives about what this information actually means. This is the reason why it is unlikely that finan cial centres ?will simply melt away into a gen eralised??space of fLows ?? ... leaving money obligations to speed their way along the cables and through the aether [sic], to and from many different terminals located in places? across the global economy (Thrift, 1994a, p. 327). A second strand of research focuses on the urban dynamics of money upon spaces of flNANClAL exclusion, the process by which people of poor and moderate incomes are dir ectly and indirectly excluded from the formal financial system and denied access to main stream retail financial services (Leyshon, Bur ton, Knights, Alferoff and Signoretta 2004a; Dymski, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A fourth area of research has focused on geographies of money as they are played out through institutions and individual actors. A particular focus of this work has been on the BOdlES that perform tasks in the service of the financial system. This work has focused in the main on the changing ?GENdER cultures? of financial institutions (Jones, 1998), such as the transformation of cultures of paternalistic masculinity within British retail banking (Halford and Savage, 1995), and analyses of labour MARkET segregation within the City of London, and the ways in which highly paid jobs in corporate finance and trading are implicitly and explicitly coded as masculine. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A fifth and final area of research has been that which has focused on local currency sys tems, such as Local Exchange and Trading Systems (Lee, 1996; Lee, Leyshon, Aldridge, Tooke, Williams and Thrift, 2004). This work, influenced by debates on diverse or al ternative economies, has sought to explore the moral geographies of money and ex change, and the possibilities of local commu nities of creating their own systems of exchange based more on the pursuit of social (NEW PARAGRAPH) and welfare gains, rather than narrow financial advantage (Williams, 1996; Williams, Aldridge, Lee, Leyshon, Thrift and Tooke, 2001; Maurer, 2003). al (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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