Read The Dictionary of Human Geography Online

Authors: Michael Watts

The Dictionary of Human Geography (107 page)

intervening opportunities
A concept dev eloped by the American sociologist S.A. Stouffer (1940) to explain migration patterns and subsequently applied in studies (NEW PARAGRAPH) of commodity flow, passenger trips, traffic movements and so on. The volume of move ment between an origin and a destination is proportional to the number of opportunities at that destination, and inversely proportional to the number of opportunities between the ori gin and the destination. Stouffer argued that distance of itself has no effect on interaction patterns and that any observed decline in the number of movements with distance (see dis tance decay) is due to the increase in the number of intervening opportunities with dis tance. A variant of this approach was devel oped in Fotheringham?s (1983) ?theory of competing destinations?. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
interviews and interviewing
Widely used methods for learning about the experiences, attitudes and demographic characteristics of individuals, households or groups. Interviews can be structured or unstructured, and they can be administered face to face, over the telephone or via email. An interview using a survey questionnaire follows a set order of pre established questions. Survey data under pins large scale quantitative social science, and can be effective for establishing attitudinal, demographic and socio economic patterns across large samples representative of vast populations (see quantitative methods; sampling; survey analysis). A census is a national survey of the entire population. Unstructured interviews are more conversa tional than a questionnaire, and allow inter viewees to express the details and meanings of their experiences in their own terms and at their own pace. Unstructured interviews can be conducted with individuals, households or as focus groups, and are an appropriate qualitative method for understanding com plex and contradictory social processes and experiences, and when respondents need the opportunity to explain and qualify their accounts. But even the least structured ethno graphic interview is very different from an ordinary conversation. It is important for an interviewer to recognize this, so as not to be caught within implicit rules of social conversa tion (Anderson and Jack, 1991). In contrast to ordinary conversations, the norm in ethno graphic interviews is to repeat questions, ask for clarification of terms, and introduce a ser ies of ethnographic explanations and styles of questions (Spradley, 1979: see ethnography). Because they are unstructured, in depth inter views are time consuming (they typically last for between one and two hours), and the sam ple is usually much smaller (and likely less representative of the population) than is the case for questionnaire surveys. (NEW PARAGRAPH) There has been considerable discussion of the influence of the interviewer on what is told and heard, and of the power dynamics be tween interviewers and interviewees. Although it is advisable for interviewers to dress and comport themselves so as to ?fit in?, it is widely assumed to be impossible and undesirable for them to neutralize their presence. The re searcher is integral to the interview process, and his or her gender, age, sexuality, class and race (and many other characteristics) will affect access and what they are told. In survey research, this is known as the ?interviewer effect?. There are two issues here. First, what we are told is situational, depending on the perceived social characteristics of the inter viewer, the location of the interview, and many other contextual factors. Second, because most interviews are structured by ?a division of labour in which one talks and one listens?, relations of oppression and domin ation may be unwittingly reproduced within them (Bondi, 2003, p. 70; but see England (NEW PARAGRAPH) and McDowell (1998) for a different set of dynamics when interviewing elites). Both concerns have led to recommendations that interviewers reflect upon their positionality in order to assess how they may be affecting (and affected by) the interview situation (see situated knowledge). Rose (1997b) cautions, however, that there are limits to such reflex ivity, because we are not and cannot be fully conscious or transparent to ourselves; and Bondi (2003) notes that much communica tion within an interview is non verbal and non cognitive (see also non representational theory). Power relations, and points of com monality and difference between interviewers and interviewees are also mobile and complex (McDowell, 1998; Kobayashi, 2001; Crang, 2002; England, 2002). Concerns about power relations have led to experiments training and working with community based interviewers (Gibson Graham, 1994; Pratt, 2004), and to calls for more activist research (Kobayashi, 2001; see also activism, action research). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Key objectives for any unstructured inter view are to create an intersubjective space in which the interviewee can express him or herself fully, and to strive to understand what is communicated as fully as possible, whilst causing no harm to the interviewee. Bondi (2003) makes a distinction between empathy and identification: the former (the recommended stance) involves the capacity to understand the interviewee?s feelings without becoming absorbed within and over whelmed by them. If overwhelmed, the inter viewer can move too quickly through difficult topics, or rush to comfort the interviewees without allowing them the opportunity to fully express their thoughts and feelings. Unstructured interviewing involves a process of ?learning to listen? rather than searching to confirm pre existing ideas or theories. Ander son writes of her disappointment with the transcripts from her life history interviews with rural women, because the transcripts lacked detail and offered little insight into these women?s emotional lives. Anderson closely and very usefully analyses the many moments in her interviews where she fore closed opportunities for women to describe their lives, and thus subtlety communicated a double message: ?Tell me about your experi ence, but don?t tell me too much? (Jack and Anderson, 1991, p. 15). She recommends that all researchers review their transcribed inter views ?to listen critically to [their] interviews, to [their] responses as well as [their] answers. We need to hear what [the interviewee] im plied, suggested, and started to say but didn?t. We need to interpret their pauses and, when it happens, their unwillingness or inabil ity to respond? (Jack and Anderson, 1991, p. 17). As this quote suggests, qualitative interviews typically require textual rather than the statistical analyses typical for ques tionnaire surveys. The desire to extract the most meaning from transcripts has led some researchers to use transcription systems developed for conversational analysis, in which attempts are made to signal pauses and capture some of the emotional content of the interview within the transcription (England, 2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Domosh (2003) has criticized geographers for tending to analyse interview transcripts as if they are authentic expressions of experience. The need to examine interview data as discourse and performance rather than raw experience is nicely demonstrated in Visweswaran?s (1994) description of her dis covery that several of her interviewees had deceived her. Her analysis shows interviews to be performances in which the interviewees display limited and sometimes falsified aspects of their selves and experiences. Rather than worrying about the fact of deception, Viswes waran tries to understand why she was told particular things for specific reasons. These reasons include the fact that interviewees were unable to express some ideas or criti cisms within dominant discourse. It is only through repeated interviews, supplemented by ethnographic and archival research, that she is able to glean this. Nightingale (2003) approaches the incompleteness of in depth interviews from another angle, stressing the advantage of mixed methods. Given the par tial nature of all knowledge, she recommends that interview material be combined with other types of data, and that it be treated as no more authentic or less mediated than quan tified forms of data, in the case of her research, remote sensing maps. Because survey methods are more appropriate for establishing patterns over a large population, they can be used effectively in combination with qualitative interviews. (NEW PARAGRAPH) There are many excellent methodology text books that introduce the basics of interviewing methodology, including Limb and Dwyer (2001) and Valentine (2005). gp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Crang (2002); Limb and Dwyer (2001); Valentine (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
intifada
A popular uprising against military occupation (see occupation, military), de rived from the Arabic for a ?shaking off?. The term originated in two phases of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 and, despite United Nations Security Council resolutions and international law, encouraged its civilians to establish colonies (?settlements?) there (see verticality, politics of). The First Intifada was a spontaneous uprising that began in December 1987. It involved a disengagement from systems of Israeli administration and developed into a vigorous assertion of the Palestinian right to national self determination. After a protracted struggle, the uprising came to an end in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo accords, the promise of a phased Israeli with drawal and the establishment ofthe Palestinian National Authority. The process of Israeli colonization continued unchecked, however, and in September 2000 a Second Intifada, the al Aqsa Intifada, broke out (Carey, 2001; Gregory, 2004b). It was rooted in the failure of the ?peace process? and the accelerated dispos session of Palestinians, but it spluttered to an end during 2005. The Second Intifada was more desperate and more violent than the first: B?Tselem, the Israeli Center for Human Rights, estimates that 422 Israelis and 1,551 Palestinians were killed between 1987 and 2000, whereas 468 Israelis and 3,418 Palestinians had been killed from 2000 through (NEW PARAGRAPH) to April 2006. The term ?intifada? was also invoked by some Iraqi political movements opposed to the US occupation since 2003 and by some Lebanese activists in their struggle against Syrian domination in 2005. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) See Electronic Intifada at http://eletronicintifada. net; and the Forum on al Aqsa Intifada, in Arab World Geographer (October 2001) at http://users. fmg.uva.nl/vmamadouh/awg/ (NEW PARAGRAPH)
invasion and succession
A concept adapted from ecoLogy by sociologists of the cHicago scHooL to describe processes of neigHBour Hood change within cities. Within ecology, the concept is derived from ideas regarding the ?survival of the fittest? in the competition for living space (cf. darwinism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) According to the Chicago School model of urban residential patterns (cf. zonaL modeL), the main stimulus to urban expansion is in migration of relatively low income groups. These are largely constrained to low cost, high density, relatively poor quality housing, much of which is concentrated in the inner city; in addition, many move to that area because of the presence there of family and friends who assist their initial assimiLation to a new milieu (cf. cHain migration). The pres sure that this puts on inner city housing stock stimulates existing residents to seek housing further from the centre, initiating a ripple effect through all of the city?s zones with residents on the urban edge responding by moving into new housing. Growth at the centre thus leads to expansion on the urBan Fringe through a pro cess of FiLtering, whereby housing moves down the socio economic scale as one group replaces another in a neighbourhood, whilst households move up the housing scale in terms of housing age and quality. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Given the context in which the model was developed 1920s Chicago many of the immigrants who initiated the invasion and succession sequence were members of ethnic minorities (see etHnicity). Their movement into areas might be challenged, causing hous ing stress (as densities then build up in the areas that they already occupy), until eventu ally pressure on an adjacent area leads to its residents yielding (cf. BLocKBustiNg). rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bulmer (1986). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
investment
Most commonly discussed by geographers in the context of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), which Dicken defines as ?direct investment which occurs across na tional boundaries, that is, when a firm from one country buys a controlling investment in a firm in another country or where a firm sets up a branch or subsidiary in another country? (2003, p. 51). FDI involves either an ?or ganic/greenfield? strategy, in which investment is used to establish operations in an overseas country from scratch, or a ?merger? strategy, where investment is used to buy an existing operator. (NEW PARAGRAPH) When a firm or individual makes an invest ment, the aim is usually to reap financial bene fit, either by selling the commodity or resource purchased at a later date at a profit (as investment banks do through stock and commodities markets) or by extracting value added in some other way. FDI usually follows the latter strategy, aiming to use an overseas investment to enhance long term profitability by extracting value from presence in another country. As Dunning and Norman?s (1987) ?theory of international enterprise? suggests, FDI can allow: (1) the leverage of existing assets overseas, usually resulting in increased sales and profits; and/or (2) access to new assets, again resulting in either increased sales (through innovation, for example, when the asset is skilled labour) or improved profit ability (e.g. when costs are reduced because access is gained to cheap labour). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The geography of investment can be studied at two scaLes. At the macro scale it is possible to study the worldwide aggregate trends in FDI. Shatz and Venables (2000) show that: (NEW PARAGRAPH) the developed countries provide the dom inant origin of FDI (~90 per cent), although traditional sources such as the USA and the UK are declining in their relative share be cause of the growing importance of Eastern European and South East Asian nations; (2) the developed nations are also the dominant receivers of FDI (~70 per cent). This does not, however, mean that developing countries are not important sources and sinks of FDI. Indeed, there are a small number of countries that are significant destinations for FDI be cause of the way firms seek to exploit the new INternationaL division of laboue. Pre dominantly, though, FDI is used to access developed markets, in particular as a strategy to overcome trade restrictions and access consumer markets. (NEW PARAGRAPH) At the micro scale the patchiness ofthe geog raphy of investment can be explored and the orized. Firms usually choose a place for investment that will bring particular market or asset benefits. For example, those seeking (NEW PARAGRAPH) access to knowledge rich workers will seek to invest in dusters, such as Silicon Valley (Saxenian, 1994), rather than rustbelt districts of a country. Those seeking access to markets will seek out agglomerations where demand is high, such as advertising and law producer service firms that congregate in the worLd cities of London and New York (Sassen, 2006). This means, however, that those regions that fail to attract investment can become backwaters of the global economy, as has been experienced to a certain extent in the North East of England since the closure of the coal mines in the 1970s and 1980s (Hudson, 2005) and the American Rust Belts, around Detroit in particular (Glasmeier, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . jf (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Shatz and Venables (2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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