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Authors: Michael Watts

The Dictionary of Human Geography (217 page)

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water
A prerequisite for life on Earth, water, unlike some ?natural? resources, has no sub stitute. It is present at every scale, from the global atmospheric system to the individual cell, and stores, redistributes and releases about 30 per cent of the total amount of solar energy that hits the Earth (Clarke, 1993). To some extent a renewable resource, water?s availability is nevertheless finite and depen dent on regional variations, seasonal fluctu ations and cLimate change, as well as being subject to sustained, and sometimes violent, local and geopoLiticaL disputes. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Water resources are powerfully shaped by human actions, including reduction of the Earth?s storage capacity through development of the built environment (e.g. in the suburban expansion of major cities around the world); the degradation of water quality through poL Lution (e.g. in the arsenic poisoning of groundwater wells in Bangladesh and West Bengal); and the overuse or mismanagement of water resources that makes them scarce (e.g. in the 1930s Dust Bowl in the Great Plains of the USA). Water has also attracted monumental feats of civil engineering and technological governance throughout human history, and has been frequently tied up with the constitution ofnation states and national identities (see nationaLism). The mega dams that became emblems of the assertion of inde pendence of sovereign states (re) emerging from the yoke of European imperiaLism in the second half of the twentieth century are one example. Another is the long history of sustained engineering that has gone, and con tinues to go, into stabilizing the low lying territory of the Netherlands (Bijker, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Human geographers have made important contributions to understanding the material cultures and political economies of water use over a long period, through various theoretical perspectives. Amongst the most significant of these perspectives are environmentaL his tories of the politics of water governance in situations of water scarcity and conflicting demand, such as in California (see Gottlieb and Fitzsimmons, 1991), and the constitutive role ofwater in the poLiticaL ecoLogy ofworld cities such as New York (Gandy, 2002). sw (NEW PARAGRAPH)
welfare geography
An approach to geog raphy where the emphasis is on spatiaL inequaLity and territoriaL justice. Bound up with the rise of radicaL geography in the early 1970s, welfare geography stresses the need to identify and explain the existence of crime, hunger, poverty and other forms of discrimination and disadvantage. Originally conceived by David Smith (1977), welfare geography basically sought to reveal who gets what, where and how. This early work was (NEW PARAGRAPH) largely descriptive, and developed the abstract formulation used in welfare economics, grounding it empirically but maintaining the use of algebraic representations. It provided a basis for evaluation. Current welfare configur ations, in terms of who gets what, where and how, could be judged against alternatives. This preoccupation with description eventu ally was matched, and then superseded, by work on the processes through which inequal ity is produced. marxist economics replaced neo cLassicaL economics as the basis for explanatory analysis, which takes place at two different levels. The first involves understand ing how the whole economic political social system functions, and teasing out generic tendencies (see mode of production). In the case of capitaLism, for example, this level of analysis reveals that inequality is endemic. uneven deveLopment is the spatial imprint, the geographical result of the restlessness of capitalism as a system. The second level of explanation attends to the details of parti cular economic social political systems; for example, how housing policy under capitalism advantages some people in some places and disadvantages other people in other places. The analysis of the politics behind these pol icies has recently been reinvigorated (Staeheli and Brown, 2003), as part of renewed interest in the relationship between sociaL justice and the state. Accompanying an attention to the restructuring of the weLfare state, which characterizes much of this recent work (Peck, 2001b), have been efforts to theorize a rela tional ethics of care. Drawing on feminist theory, this work seeks to uncover the social relations behind constructions of care and of justice. Understanding politics as integral in the everyday doing of care, the emphasis is on the connections and relations rather than the difference between categories, such as private and public, state and market (Smith and Lee, 2004). kwa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Smith and Lee (2004); Staeheli and Brown (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
welfare state
A social system whereby the state assumes primary, but not exclusive, responsibility for the welfare of its citizens more specifically, those parts of the state apparatus involved in the direct provision or management of public services and bene fits. In principle, the welfare state exists to address issues of spatiaL inequaLity and territoriaL justice through income and wealth redistribution policies. In areas of policy such as education, employment, health, social services and transport, the state appar atus strives to ensure the delivery of some basic levels of service. So, for example, state funded schooling sets out to ensure that every child receives an education. Empirical studies have, however, revealed that in practice it is not easy to control who benefits. They have found that it is sometimes the case that the most affluent in society that gain from the provision of pubLic services. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The modern Western welfare state emerged during the 1930s and 1940s, in the context of the two world wars and significant economic and political turbulence. The precise timing differed from one country to another, as did the functions that were brought within the remit of the welfare state. Most noticeably, for example, the USA has never had a national health service, unlike most of the nations of Europe. In general, welfare states were formed to address some of the fundamental social issues of the time, such as disease, inequality and poverty. A strong role for the state appar atus was created, in which it would it ensure a basic standard for all citizens. These decisions reflected the wider belief at the time in the enlightenment project, and in the enshrining ofuniversal rights in the design and structure of the original welfare states (see also citizenship). (NEW PARAGRAPH) However, since the 1980s the welfare state has been restructured both quantitatively and qualitatively (Pierson, 1991). Although in many countries it remains heavily involved in the lives of citizens, its size and its organiza tion have changed considerably in recent years. Critiques from the political parties of the right have become mainstream policy in a number of countries. In a growing number of countries, we have witnessed a significant rethinking of the role assigned to the welfare state. On the one hand, some functions it previously performed have been contracted out to private sector providers, in the form of privatization, or through the formation of pubLic private partnerships. This growth in private sector firms, employing their workers on private sector terms and conditions, troubles the notion of public services (Pinch, 1997). How public is a service managed by the welfare state but delivered by the private sector, according to market rules? This also challenges us to reflect carefully on where the welfare state starts and stops, where its edges are (Peck, 2001a). On the other hand, the introduction into the state apparatus of private sector type audits, evaluations, management techniques and performance indicators has (NEW PARAGRAPH) transformed its modus operandi. While the welfare state might continue to deliver the services, the conditions under which this is performed is as a result qualitatively different (Jessop, 2002). kwa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Jessop (2002); Pierson (1991). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
West, the
The idea of the West and the con cept of westernization are interwoven with a world view that believes in the superiority of the human over the non human, the mas culine over the feminine, the adult over the child, and the modern over the traditional. Legitimized through ?anthropocentric doc trines of secular salvation, in the ideologies of progress, normality and hyper masculinity, and in theories of cumulative growth of sci ence and technology? (Nandy, 1997, p. 169), westernization is akin to another form of col onization an intimate enemy (NEW PARAGRAPH) which at least six generations of the third worLd have learnt to view as a prerequisite for their liberation. This coLoniaLism colonizes minds in addition to bodies and it releases forces within the colonial societies to alter their cultural priorities once and for all. In the process, it helps generalize the concept of the modern West from a geographical and temporal entity to a psychological category. The West is now everywhere, within the West and outside; in structures and in minds. (Nandy, 1997, p. 170) (NEW PARAGRAPH) ForBhabha (1985), such omnipresence ofthe West (cf. eurocentrism) allows opportunities for hybridity and resistance: when colonized people become ?European?, the resemblance can subvert the identity of that which is being represented. The hybrid that articulates colonial and native knowledges may reverse the process of domination as repressed knowledges enter subliminally, enabling subversion, intervention and resistance (Peet and Watts, 1993). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The concept of development, with its close affinity with teLeoLogicaL views of history, science and progress, has served as a central and dynamic theme in Western modernist dis cursive formations. By the end of the nine teenth century, both the colonialist as well as the radical alternative intellectual traditions became associated with ?linearity, scientism, and modernization, universalisms which car ried the appeal of secular utopias constructed with rationality and enlightenment? (Peet and Watts, 1993, p. 232). With capitalism, bureaucracy and science as the holy trinity, development became modernity on a planet ary scale, in which the West served as the ?transcendental pivot of analytical reflection? (Slater, 1992, p. 312). Western modernity attempted to organize social life on the basis of voluntary actions of individuals whose values were supposed to be predominantly utilitar ian. Similarly, natural resources came to mean those parts of nature that were required as inputs for industrial production and colonial trade. Technology and economics mutually reinforced the assumption that nature?s limits must be broken for the creation of abundance. The concept of the nation state, moreover, displaced other surviving notions of the state, the latter being perceived as examples of medievalism and primitivism (Anderson, 1991a [1983]). The process was strengthened when ?indigenous? intellectuals and activists confronting the colonial power found in the idea of the nation state the clue to the West?s economic success and political dominance: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Indeed, no other idea, except probably the twin notions of modern science and devel opment, was accepted so uncritically by the elites of old continuous civilizations like China and India. Even modern science and development became, for Third World elites the responsibility precisely of the nation state and two new rationalizations for its predominant role. (Nandy, 1992, p. 267) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Development discourses have continued to construct the relationship between West and non West in terms of the West being the detached centre of rationality and intelligence: the West possesses the expertise, technology and management skills that the non West is lacking. Conversely, this lack is the chief cause of the problems of the non West (cf. occidentalism; orientalism). What is consistently ignored in this framework are questions of power and inequality, whether on the global level of inter national MARkETS, state subsidies and the arms trade, or the more local level of landholding, food supplies and income distribution. This dominant paradigm of the West, furthermore, ?constitutes a perfectly auto referential sphere, containing only a very limited number of elem ents. Need, scarcity, work, production, income, and consumption are the key concepts within an enclosed semantic field that has no need of the outside world? (Latouche, 1992, p. 254). (NEW PARAGRAPH) While the history of the ?modernizing? world is often erroneously written as one of failed imitation of the West failures of secular dem ocracy, nationalism, enlightened modernity or enslavement to ?tradition? scholars working in the post colonial paradigms have complicated such frameworks (see post colonialism). Conceptualizing modernity as a construct and an organizing trope, especially for the national developmentalist successors of colonial regimes, these scholars have suggested ways in which the complexities of the East West encounters might be better apprehended through metaphors of translation, hybridization and dislocation, rather than more monolithic ideas of imitation, assimilation or rejection (Abu Lughod, 1998, p. 18). Furthermore, they have complicated the very exercise of knowledge production ?in and for the West? where the very act of writing for the West about ?the other? implicates us in projects that establish Western authority and cultural difference (Abu Lughod, 2001, p. 105). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Such intellectual projects acquire particular significance in the context of feminist politics in the third world, which has had to negotiate a complex relationship with Marxist struggles at home, as well as with women?s movements and writings in the West (Loomba, 1998, p. 253: see also marxism). Despite the deep scepticism to which ?feminism? and agendas associated with Western feminisms are often subjected in post colonial contexts, women?s movements have consistently challenged the assumption that women?s activism in post colonial worlds are only inspired by their Western counterparts (see feminist geog raphies). Such moves have involved rewriting indigenous histories, appropriating pre colonial symbols and mythologies, and ampli fying the voices of women themselves, each of which is ridden with its own problems and contradictions (Loomba, 1998). Grappling with ?the woman question? anywhere requires: (a) attending to the complex ways in which the West and things/concepts associated with the West are embraced, repudiated and translated in contemporary politics; and (b) developing subtle ways of thinking about the cultural politics of past and present colonial encoun ter(s), and more broadly, the relationship between the constructs of East and West as they have shaped anti colonial nationalist pro jects on the one hand, and the complex dynamics between processes of GLObALizATlON and the post colonial nation state on the other (Abu Lughod, 1998). rn (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Mitchell (2002c); Parajuli (1991); Sachs (1992). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
BOOK: The Dictionary of Human Geography
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