Showing papers in "Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers in 1994"

Social Constructions of Nature: A Case Study of Conflicts over the Development of Rainham Marshes

Abstract: This paper analyses social constructions of nature in different discursive contexts and the ways in which particular representations of nature are used to legitimate specific institutional policies and practices. The proposal to create a commercial and entertainment development on the Rainham Marshes Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in east London provides the case study. Drawing on arguments from media sociology and the sociology of risk, the paper explores the identification of distinctive myths of nature associated with particular sociopolitical formations within the discourses of developers, conservationists, the media and the public. Detailed ethnographic research reveals how the developers and conservationists employed different constructions of nature to justify their respective positions and how different local audiences made sense of competing claims about the relative worth of the 'nature' on their doorsteps.

Land, limits and sustainability: a conceptual framework and some dilemmas for the planning system

Abstract: This paper explores the opportunities and contradictions in applying concepts of sustainable development to land use policy. The conceptual framework is provided by 'stock maintenance' models of sustainability and a distinction is made between material, postmaterial and non-instrumental dimensions of sustainability which relate in complex ways to the use and development of land. Though concepts of sustainability are gaining ground in planning and related disciplines, translating theory into policy remains problematic. Principles of sustainability challenge the presumption in favour of development and sit uneasily with the utilitarian notion of 'balance'. They require an alternative ethical basis and, especially in the postmaterial realm, are inherently bound up with value theory. These issues are illustrated by the problem of defining 'critical natural capital'. Political commitments to sustainability were made, and to some extent encoded in planning policies, before the challenge to a demand-led economy was fully grasped. Far from effecting reconciliation, defining what is sustainable will expose conflict more starkly and at an earlier stage in the planning process. As environment-led plans and decisions are challenged by development interests, there will be opportunities to test these conclusions in specific empirical contexts.

Interpreting Nature: Cultural Constructions of the Environment

Abstract: Human society has constructed many varied notions of the environment. Scientific information about the environment is often seen as the only worthwhile knowledge. This ignores the complexities created by interaction between people and the environment. Idealist thinking argues that everything we know is based on a construct of our minds and that all is possible. Can both be correct and true? Interpreting Nature explores the position of humanity in the environment from the principle that the models we construct are imperfect and can only be provisional. Having examined the way in which the natural sciences have interrogated nature, the types of data produced and what they mean to us, this looks at the environment within philosophy and ethics, the social sciences and the arts, and analyses their role in the formation of environmental cognition.

The Cultural Politics of Place: Local Representation and Oppositional Discourse in Two Films

Abstract: In recent years, an increasing number of geographers have been concerned to develop what might be called a cultural politics of place. They have argued that the representation of places is both constituted by, and legitimates, social power relations. Although it is often acknowledged that the process of representation is thus the focus of struggle, there have been very few studies of particular examples of resistance. The paper suggests that the main reason for this neglect may be the bipolar model of culture with which most cultural geographers appear to work. This model establishes a hegemonic ideology which becomes the focus of critique and a counter-hegemonic opposition about which it is ethically difficult to speak. This model has its strengths, but a weakness is its disturbing erasure of oppositional cultural practices from geographical studies. This paper therefore prefers to draw on the notion of cultural hybridity in order to be able to discuss two films made in the early 1970s by local groups in the East End of London. The paper argues that in order to understand how these films can be described as oppositional, their complex engagement with dominant discourses must be explored. Discussion of the films centres on contemporary definitions of 'community media' and on their realist aesthetic in order strategically to specifiy their oppositionality.

Sculpting heroic histories: celebrating the centenary of the 1798 rebellion in Ireland

Abstract: In this paper I explore the role of public statuary in constructing a heroic analysis of the past through an examination of the centenary celebrations staged to commemorate the 1798 rebellion in Ireland. Monuments entered the arena of public, secular space in Ireland mainly during the nineteenth century. It was not until the latter decades of that century that nationalist statuary, which sought to elaborate Ireland's quest for political independence, emerged. The significance of these monuments rests, I argue, in their popular appeal and the debates that surrounded their construction and unveiling. Although an alliance of nationalist interests was achieved during the centenary celebrations, this paper emphasizes the tentative nature of that alliance and the gendered iconography and discourse surrounding the statues themselves.

Changing Meanings of 'Environment' in the British Planning System

Abstract: This paper examines the way 'environment' has been conceptualized within the British planning system from the 1940s to the 1990s. Drawing on texts of development plans and related planning strategy statements, it identifies a shift from a view of the environment as setting, to a stronger interest in active environmental care which in turn has been challenged by an emphasis on marketable assets. Although there are now efforts to develop more complex conceptions of environmental care related to the notion of environmental sustainability and to use these as policy principles in development plans and development regulation, it is argued that the system has persistently enabled economic and material policy preoccupations to prevail. This could also be the fate of the environmental sustainability agenda. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of sustainable development could challenge this and help to transform concepts, techniques and forms of argumentation in the planning system.

Back to the Land: Historiography, Rurality and the Nation in Interwar Wales

Abstract: This paper presents an explanation of the appeal of the rural in interwar Wales and the emergence of 'back to the land' tendencies. The context is the fluid and contested understanding of the nation and of national identity. The 'moral topography' of academics at Aberystwyth, most notably the geographer H J Fleure, is outlined. A view of rural society as essentially stable and spiritually virtuous emerges from this work. The development of such ideas within Welsh nationalist politics is outlined and 'back to the land' proposals, from academics and politicians, are discussed. A consideration of the relationship between the traditional and the modem and the role of the rural within this relationship forms the conclusion.

Regional Inequality, Regimes of Accumulation and Economic Development in Contemporary Europe

Abstract: The mid 1970s was a major turning point in Europe dividing the Fordist 'golden age', in which unprecedentedly fast economic growth went hand in hand with marked regional convergence, from a post-Fordist era in which growth rates were halved and inequalities increased. With the supply and demand side crises that undermined the Fordist model and the switch to neo-liberal ideologies and programmes, a virtuous circle of convergence and growth was thrown into reverse gear. Supply-side adjustments led to increased metropolitan polarization and to inequalities between areas. Globalization generated self-reinforcing trends towards increased economic interdependence, reduced national autonomy and increased economic integration. In the currently dominant neo-liberal conditions of integration in Europe, competitive mechanisms of regional adjustment are deflationary and increase inequalities. Attention is paid to the shape of an alternative macrogeographical framework which can regulate the contemporary contradictions of regional development in the European Union (EU).

Problematizing Geopolitics: Survey, Statesmanship and Strategy

Abstract: 'Geopolitics' is a polysemous term that exceeds all attempts to delimit it as a singular presence. It is better approached by critically investigating how the concept is made to carry certain meanings in political discourse. This paper considers three different ways in which geopolitics is used to make meaning in global politics: (i) as survey, (ii) as a philosophy of statesmanship and (iii) as grand strategy. In documenting this performative range of geopolitics, the paper problematizes the conditions of possibility which enable the production of geopolitics as knowledge generally. The key problematic it identifies is a Cartesian perspectivism which operates through assumptions about the faculty of sight to produce the siting and citing of global politics.

State and Market in Eastern Europe: Regional Development and Workplace Implications of Direct Foreign Investment in the Automobile Industry in Hungary

Abstract: Interactions between state and market in eastern Europe since 1989 are examined by focusing on inward investment in one sector the automobile industry which has been at the forefront in the development of new production strategies within the region, and one state Hungary where much foreign investment has been concentrated. The paper examines patterns of uneven development, the distinctive workplace organization and ownership form of state-planned economies, and their reconstitution as part of the process of transformation. The main direct foreign investment projects within the auto industry in eastern Europe are outlined to identify the global market context. The more detailed account of Hungary concentrates on the strategies of four leading companies: Ikarus, General Motors, Ford and Suzuki. The conclusion reconsiders the reconstitution of states and markets

Geography and Vision-Impaired and Blind Populations

Abstract: As Reginald Golledge rightly notes in his outline of the scope of research in the field of disability, disabled people have received little attention from geographers. Golledge emphasizes the potential benefits to disabled people that could be offered by the specialist skills of geographers in studying spatial problems as well as the potential benefits which may accrue to the discipline from a concern with disability and the associated development of new geographic theory, methods and applications' (63). Whilst Golledge's paper is a most welcome addition to the limited volume of work on disabled

A State Scholarship: The Political Geography of French International Science during the Nineteenth Century

Abstract: The social, cultural and political power of the modem nation state is influenced, perhaps even determined, by the degree to which it controls the production and utilization of scientific knowledge. In France, the state has traditionally exerted an extremely important influence on the activities of scientists, scholar and academics. Building on recent innovative research on the history of geography and on research into the role of state patronage in the history of other sciences, this essay considers how a powerful, centralized state was able to influence the nature and geographical structure of French international science during the nineteenth century. Based on a rich archive from the Ministre de l'Instruction Publique, the essay indicates how political upheavals, and resulting shifts in official policy towards different parts of the world and towards different forms of scholarly endeavour, had a discernible though complex impact on the process of cultural and intellectual inquiry in France and on the production of knowledge itself.

Uneven Development and the Restructuring of the Armaments Industry in Slovakia

Abstract: An analysis of contemporary uneven development in the Republic of Slovakia is based, theoretically, upon a regulationist interpretation of the restructuring of state socialism and, empirically, upon an examination of regional dependence on armament industry production complexes. Rather than a simple transition to capitalism, contemporary regional economies in Slovakia are seeing the uneven marketization of economic relations alongside the emergence of mercantilist capital. Enterprises have been faced with economic collapse as the Cold War ended and, within this context, new forms of mercantilist accumulation are emerging which may transform themselves into a capitalist class. However, the nature of such regional change is highly contested.

New Production Concepts, New Production Geographies? Reflections on Changes in the Automobile Industry

Abstract: The burgeoning crisis of capitalist production from the middle of the 1970s helped stimulate a debate as to the existence and character of an emergent crisis of Fordism, both in the broader sense of a Fordism as a macro-scale model of development and in the narrower sense of a particular form of organization of industrial production. One part of this debate came to focus upon alternative methods of organizing production as companies experimented with new strategies and geographies of mass production. Of particular significance was the challenge posed to European and North American producers by the growing importance of Japanese companies and associated 'just-in-time' and lean production methods. This paper examines the resultant restructuring of automobile production, paying particular attention to the regulatory regimes within which production takes place; the social relations of production, both between capital and labour and between capitals; technologies of production; geographies of production; and the local and regional development implications of these changes.

The search for the common ground: Estyn Evans's Ireland

Abstract: within its own social and intellectual circumstances and examined as a resource for social understanding in contemporary Ireland, the contested bases of which are concerned with the present and future definition of Irish identity in an era of social change, European integration and continuing political violence. The various motifs of Evans's work are identified and discussed within the context of their epistemological shortcomings. Evans's ideas on identity and the meaning of place are contrasted with those of the Ulster poet, John Hewitt. A reading is made which concludes that Evans's oeuvre offers one consistent if flawed attempt to represent a heterogenous Ireland which might encompass all the island's inhabitants.

Geopolitics in the Foreign Office: British Representations of Argentina 1945-1961

Abstract: Existing studies of Anglo-Argentine relations tend to neglect the period 1945-61. The paper presents a critical geopolitical analysis of British representations of Argentina within foreign policy discourse. Geopolitical and geoeconomic representations, including those based on science, mapping and surveying, are understood as crucial to the legitimation of foreign policies. Government records are used to explore how a long-standing trading relationship was being replaced by relations based increasingly on conflict and geopolitical competition in the Antarctic and the South Atlantic.

The changing geography of recession : analyses of local unemployment time series

Abstract: Unemployment in Great Britain rose again in the early 1990s. By contrast with previous experience, parts of southern England appeared to suffer earlier and more severely than some other parts of Britain. This reversal of traditional norms fuelled renewed interest in the impact of recession at the local and regional scale. Unemployment dynamics are examined over the period from June 1978 to December 1991 at the local labour market area scale. An analysis of turning points in local unemployment series confirms key differences in the timing of entry into the two recessions experienced during this period. Cluster analysis classification techniques are used to identify the shapes of typical local unemployment cycles and these typical unemployment cycles are shown to display distinctive spatial expressions.

Reimagining the Geopolitics of Development: Continuing the Dialogue

Abstract: In commenting on my analysis of the geopolitical imagination and the enframing of development theory, O Tuathail raises a number of key issues that can help us further the dialogue that he has positively initiated. He is right to observe that my article contained a series of psychological terms such as imagination, memory, recognition, enframing and forgetting that could be developed in more detail, as also the general interface between psychoanalytical theory and a post-structuralist approach to geopolitical reflection. Equally, I support his call for a radicalization of our work on geopolitics, and I concur with the suggestion that previous forms of theorization and conceptual emplacement must be continually rethought and reconstructed. However, at the same time, we need to be able to move in an analytical world where there are some nodal points of theoretical meaning which can help us structure our explanations. And in our explorations it is important that we make connections, so rather than suggesting the idea of a 'spatiality of flows and movement not fixity and presence' (231), we might perhaps think of the need to explain the intermingling of fixities and flows, of destabilizing movements and persistent presences.

Prediction and predictability in geographical systems

Abstract: Prediction plays an essential part in the building of models of geographical systems: it exposes weaknesses in our concepts, checks our credibility and encourages model reformulation. Despite this centrality, the notion of system predictability and the way it fits into model building is often weakly developed in the geographical literature. The nature of predictions is illustrated here by the attempts to build geographical models of the spread of epidemic waves. Three types of spatial models are explored and illustrated: (i) descriptive models of a spread process, (ii) predictive models of the future extent of spread and (iii) interdictive models which show how spread may be curtailed. From this review, the wider role of prediction and predictability in other areas of geographical model-building is explored.

Resources, Student: Staff Ratios and Teaching Quality in British Higher Education: Some Speculations Aroused by Jenkins and Smith

Abstract: The relationship between the amount spent per student in British universities and the quality' of the outcomes (measured by the proportion of students getting a 'good honours degree') is a focus of much contemporary political debate clouded by imprecise definitions of quality. The observed empirical relationship that as resources have declined, quality has increased is counter-intuitive. This commentary seeks to clarify the issues and suggests why the paradoxical relationship occurs.