Chapter 8: Geographies of Identity and Difference

The Cultural Turn

• %%Study of human geography.%%
• Used in context of recent changes in many of the social sciences and humanities - suggests both a different understanding of culture and an increased appreciation of culture in understanding humans and their political and economic activities.

Rethinking Culture

• The term new cultural geography distinguishes the revised concepts of culture from the traditional landscape school view.
• The rise of humanist, Marxist, feminist, and postmodern approaches involved acceptance of the idea that human geography is an interpretive endeavour—in other words, questions of meaning and communication are relevant. Thus, a symbolic interpretation of culture became prominent in the discipline.
  • This view broadens the concept of culture to more fully embrace non-material culture and to emphasize that individuals create groups through communication. This broader view allows geographers to consider topics beyond landscape, specifically topics that fall under the general heading of what might be called the spatial constitution of culture.
• %%There is no single fixed entity called culture but a plurality of cultures, shared by human groups in particular%% times.
  • According to this, cultures are not objects but mediums or processes, but as described by Peter Jackson as maps of meaning: the “codes with which meaning is constructed, conveyed and understood”.
  • This interpretation has lead geographers to study many topics besides landscape, including previously ignored groups, new cultural forms, Eurocentrism, and ideologies of domination and oppression.

Rethinking Identity

• In the present day, human geographers pay attention to factors such as language, religion, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, as these reflect landscape. This is referred to the term critical geography, a term referring to the need for geographic studies to move beyond description and explanation.
• %%Human geographers base their questions of human identity on the logic of constructionism rather than traditional logic of%% %%essentialism%%%%.%%
  • Essentialist view sees this as inherited and largely unchanging.
  • Constructionist view stresses that those characteristics are socially made or acquired and that they are contested in the sense that there are no unequivocal meanings.

Rethinking Landscape

• Studies focuses on two aspects;
  • symbolic (landscape)
  • represented (landscapes as represented in literature and art and more visible and material landscape).
  • Such work often treats landscape as a text that is open to interpretation and, recognizing the importance of images, including iconography.
• Understanding of nature is filtered through human representations and representation of nature is never neutral.

A Focus on Difference

• %%Cultural turn invites us to explore more than cultures as ways of life and the visible landscapes related to them; it invites us to explore culture as a process in which people are involved.%%
• One of the reasons for the interest in difference and inequality is the rethinking of culture, identity, and landscape.
• %%Cultural turn’s impact has been expressly notable in studies of human identity and human difference and of politics related to these matters. There is persistent questioning of traditional concepts, classifications, and categories such as those used in discussions of language and religion.%%
• Cultural turn has opened a number of new directions for human geographers.
• The Saurien landscape school tradition saw humans modifying physical geography into a cultural landscape and emphasized the regional mapping of material and visible features of landscape on the grounds that such mapping assumes the existence of a single distinctive and unchanging cultural constituting a culture.

The Myth of Race

• Scientific research is eliminating three main long standing myths concerning the idea of human evolution;

  1. idea of human evolution as a ladder of progress
  2. existence of several different human races
  • as humans moved across the world to all different physical environments into distinct spatial groups, adaptations developed in their culture and in some body features.
  1. races not only exist but also can be classified according to their level of intelligence.

Racism, Identities, and Genocide

• Groups seen different in a majority population can be seen negatively and treated unequally; and to a sad extreme consequence they can be genocide.
• Precondition for genocide is symbolic, and sometimes spatial distancing or separation of one group, the perpetrators*“in group”* and another, the victim “out group”.
  • The victim group is regularly given a derogatory label, further emphasizing that they do not belong here. In most cases the perpetrators justify genocide in terms of their right as a group to occupy a particular place.
• %%Genocide%% %%requires participation of many people in the perpetrator group and this level of participation is more likely to occur when the actions taken are formally authorized by the state.%%

Ethnicity

• Most groups who self-identify as ethnic; base their ethnicity on one or both of the two principal cultural variables: language and religion.
  • Other common bases for delimiting an ethnic group are perceived racial identity, recent immigrant status, and way of life as evidenced by particular culture traits such as music, dance, food, and drink preferences
• %%Ethnic Group%% %%is any group with a common cultural tradition that identifies itself as a group and constitutes a minority in the society where it lives.%%
• The group may be determine according to one or more cultural criteria, but it must not live in its national territory.
• Like language and religion, ethnicity is both inclusionary and exclusionary. Some people are defined as insiders because they share the common identity of the group, while others are seen as outsiders because they are different.
  • Thus it is possible for an ethnic group to change its identity and behaviour over time.
• %%Ethnic Region%% %%is an area occupied by people of common cultural heritage who live in close spatial proximity.%%

Ethnic Migration

• Most immigrant ethnic groups, specifically those moving into urban areas, experience an initial period of social and spatial isolation that may lead to low levels of well-being, relative deprivation, and the development of an ethnic colony, enclave, or ghetto.
• Often a local group identity is reinforced by chain migration, the process whereby migrants from a particular area follow the same paths as friends and relatives who migrated before them.

Assimilation, Acculturation and Multiculturalism

• New immigrant groups experience assimilation or acculturation.
  • Assimilation %%is the process by which an ethnic group is absorbed into a larger society and loses its own identity.%%
  • some groups move to different places and steadily lose their ethnic traits and assimilate.
  • Acculturation %%is the process by which an ethnic group is absorbed into a larger society while retaining aspects of distinct identity.%%
  • some groups move and acculturate and retain their distinctive identity.
• In some countries if a group does not assimilates, it is mainly due to the country’s state policy of multiculturalism.
  • Multiculturalism is a policy that endorses the right of ethnic groups to remain distinct rather than to be assimilated into a dominant society.

Gender

• Human geographic recognition of gendered identities and related differences owes much to the work of mostly female geographers inspired by various bodies of feminist theory.
• Feminist research has also been inspired by Marxist ideas about inequality and need for social justice and by postmodern ideas about excluded groups.

Feminist Geography

• %%Body of feminist geographic research emerged in the aim of making space for women, in the everyday world of the and society more generally and also in the knowledge produced by geographers.%%
  • %%This involved acknowledging that people were active agents, living their lives in households and other places.%%
• Feminist Geographers have been at the forefront of geographic research about the production of difference and the way that some groups are marginalized and excluded; there is a focus on gender, but many other categories of difference are incorporated.
• Plus, we must acknowledge the diversity of gender and sexuality to include such identities as lesbian, gay, transsexual, and queer/questioning. Recognizing that there are several different ways of being women and men presents another dimension to the practice of human geography.
• %%Feminist-inspired studies continue to challenge the practice of human geography, being variously understood as both a part of and yet somehow against that practice.%%
  • But despite these tensions, feminist geography has contributed significantly to the human geographic enterprise, particularly to our understandings of hegemony, difference, the power of exclusion, and the social construction of identity.

Gender in the Landscape

• Landscapes are shaped by gender and provide the contexts for the reproduction of gender roles and relationships.
• %%Both visible and symbolic landscapes, reflect the power inequalities between women and men and demonstrate the embodiment of patriarchal cultural values and related%% %%sexism%%%%.%%
• In urban areas, statues and monuments reinforce the idea of male power by commemorating male military and political leaders: “Conveyed to us in the urban landscapes of Western societies is a heritage of masculine power, accomplishment, and heroism; women are largely invisible, present occasionally if they enter the male sphere of politics or militarism”
• Work in the home is not work has had implications within the sphere of waged employment, with women seen as suited to domestic and caregiving work outside the home.
  • Because of the low status of such work, it is typically relatively undervalued and lower paid than other work.
• It is usual for women to encounter sexist practices and gender stereotyping in paid workplaces, particularly as they move into positions widely understood to be men’s work.

Gender Relations in Agriculture

• In the less developed world, there is increasing recognition of the roles played by women in agriculture, past and present

• In many parts of the world women play important role in rice cultivation and in horticultural production of commercial crops such as chillies, eggplants and okra and in subsistence crops.

  • Even though these jobs don’t play enough.
  • If such initiatives increase women’s income, they are clearly of great value; in fact several of them yield well and generate needed income. However, such efforts face two main problems.
  1. the new schemes are not based on the local knowledge of horticulture bot imported knowledge.
  2. they may not be environmentally or economically sustainable as this production frequently involves tree removal that in turn leads to reproductions in the soil’s fertility and moisture holding capacity.

Gender and Health

• Since about the mid-1990s, the feminist geography research agenda has prompted increased interest in the complex links between health, place, and culture. In common with other topics investigated within the general rubric of feminist geography - concerned with how the life experiences of men and women differ.
• This work requires research on topics such as health and beauty of women, body spaces of breastfeeding, struggle of women with agoraphobia and mental health, including others.

Gender and Human Development

• Clear evidences of gender inequality in the larger context of global human development.
• In many countries women’s education and health have changed up drastically over the years, but in some countries still too many women die in childbirth and are excluded from playing important role in public, lack a strong voice in families and communities, and have limited employment opportunities.
• Eliminating gender inequality not only ought to be a fundamental goal of any civilized society, but is also essential to winning the war on global poverty.

Sexuality

• Is studied as an expression of identity and as one way that dominant heterosexual landscape can be challenged.
• %%Researchers are also working on%% %%queer theory%%%%, a controversial term that refers to a concern with all people who are seen as and/or who have been made to feel different because of their sexual identity on the fringes of%% %%hetero-normative society%%%%.%%
  • It also emphasizes the fluidity and even hybridity of identities and is concerned with empowering those who lack power.
• In the current days surveys have become more subtle, recognizing that there are three different issues at sake:
  • identity; what sexual orientation is claimed by an individual
  • attraction; who an individual considers attractive
  • behaviour; whether or not an individual has engaged in same sex activity.

Sexuality in the Landscape

• One way sexuality is expressed in landscape is by identifying a residential and commercial area where lesbians and gay dominate.

Identities and Landscape

Imposing Identities on Others

• Groups of people often understand themselves in relation to other groups.

Landscapes as a Reflection of Identity

• Dominant groups have constructed landscapes as places that have meaning for them and that take certain characteristics—those of the dominant group—for granted.
• Areas of Western world have been constructed assuming such characteristics as heterosexual nuclear families, women dependent on men, and able-bodiedness.
  • Due to such assumptions, those individuals and groups who do not conform to these societal expectations are perceived as different and are frequently excluded or disadvantaged as members of society.
  • When such people intrude into landscapes that were not constructed for them, the result is often controversial, but culturally and spatially.
• In point of fact, distinctive feature of the contemporary world is the unsettling effect that the expression of other identities and the crossing of spatial boundaries has on dominant groups.

The Concept of a Microculture

• %%Microcultural%% %%or%% %%Subcultural identity%% %%is understood as relatively small groups of people within a larger culture who differ in some way from the majority.%%
  • Youth subcultures that share a particular musical interest, clothing preference or gang membership are prime examples.
  • Such groups typically distinguish themselves from a larger culture by means of language, employing words in new ways or coining new words.

Contesting Identity and Landscape

• Understanding of place held by one group may be different from that held by another, the identity and ownership of those places may be contested.
• Religion, the myth of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality are not the only grounds for exclusion from the landscape created by the dominant group.
• %%Some disadvantaged groups are more visible than others, and some are more controversial, but all are in some way oppressed because the landscapes created by dominant groups presume a set of identity characteristics that they do not possess%%
• %%Landscape is resisted by microculture in the form of new social movements - in support of the environment, social justice, ethnic separatism, and so on; and they are best interpreted as expressions of opposition to power.%%
• Means of communication developed in response to oppression from a majority is the form of language of known as Polari.
  • Associated with gays, and to a lesser degree of lesbians Polari was an underground vernacular in large British cities during twentieth century.

Geographies of Well-Being

• %%Term%% %%well-being%% %%is used to refer to the overall circumstances of a group of people and to specific components of security and comfort.%%

Measuring Well-Being

• Components of well-being;
  • income, wealth and employment
  • the living environment, including housing
  • physical and mental health
  • education
  • social order
  • social belonging
  • recreation and leisure
• Achieving this basic goal requires satisfaction of two needs:
  • physical health and,
  • the ability to make informed decisions concerning personal behaviour.
• These two in turn require that the following conditions be satisfied:
  • adequate supply of food and water
  • availability of protective housing
  • safe workplace
  • safe physical environment
  • necessary health care
  • security while young
  • relationships with others
  • physical security
  • economic security
  • safe birth control and childbearing
  • required education
• UN has led the way in the measurement of well-being, variously called quality of life or human development.

The Geography of Happiness

• Happiness cannot be measured objectively it is how we perceive things.
• It is common in surveys to ask whether people are happy, just happy or not so happy.
• Two main not so surprising points that come up from surveys are; that the rich report greater happiness than do the poor and, perhaps surprisingly, that people in affluent countries have not become happier as they have become richer.
• For many people happiness is having things others don’t have, so as others become wealthier the already wealthy become less happy; and when people achieve a better standard of living, they are unable to appreciate its pleasures.

Elitist Landscapes

• %%Geographers studying cities have found out that more privileged or the ones who can afford; prefer to live near a lake, river or somewhere away from industries and factories, with low pollution; with people with high social status.%%
• In many countries elite areas are partially segregated - they have special features such as golf clubs and retail markets.

Folk Culture and Popular Culture

Folk Culture

• %%Is more traditional, less subject to change, and, in principle, more homogeneous than popular culture.%%
• It has pre-industrial origins and bear relatively little relation to class.
  • Religion and ethnicity are likely to be major unifying variables, and traditional family and other social traditions are paramount.
• %%Folk cultures tend to be characterized by a rural setting and a strong sense of place.%%

Popular Culture

• Trends of popular culture rapidly spread in more developed areas; where people have the time, income, and inclination to take part.
  • Diffusion of popular culture is an important part of cultural globalization.
• It is said domain of popular culture is a key area in which subordinate groups can contest their domination. -
• Geographic analyses of popular culture focus on specific landscapes (shopping malls, tourism, sports, gardens, urban commercial strips) and regions (musical regions, recreational regions).
  • Shopping malls - artificial landscapes of consumption, located in most urban areas in the more developed world - provide a vivid illustration of the impact of popular culture on landscape.

Music

• As identities evolve, cities sprawl, and landscapes change, similar to it music changes.
• Studies show there are differences in musical preference place to place.
  • These preferences are linked to immigration patterns and ethnic identity.

Sports

• Regions can be determined in terms of sporting preferences among spectators and participants alike.
• For some people, supporting a particular sports team is an important component of their everyday identity.
• Identity at the national scale comes to the fore when there are major international competitions, most notably the fifa World Cup in association football.

Tourism

• %%The importance of tourism cannot be measured simply in numerical terms; tourism is explicitly bound up with matters of identity and difference.%%
• %%It is a means by which both tourist and host communities create their respective identities and emphasize their difference from one another.%%

Tourist Attractions

• Common tourist attractions:
  • good weather
  • attractive scenery
  • amenities for activities
  • historical and cultural features
  • accessibilities and infrastructure
  • accommodation
• In more developed world, such areas usually are urban or coastal.

Mass Tourism

• %%It is a form of mass consumption; it involves the purchase of commodities produced under conditions of mass production.%%
  • The industry is dominated by a few producers; new attractions are regularly developed.
  • these characteristics make the mass tourist experience much the same everywhere, regardless of site.

Alternative Tourism

• On one side, tourism encourages local crafts and ceremonies; and one hand it can destroy local cultures and dramatically change local community.
• %%Increasing awareness of the problems associated with conventional mass tourism has stimulated development of various%% %%alternative%% %%types of tourism centred on unspoiled environments and the needs of local people%%.
• In the recent years, surge on ecotourism is seen.

Creating Places and Peoples for Tourists

• One reason why people visit exotic places is because they want to experience cultural difference.
  • Such places are rarely authentic; in many cases they have been constructed to satisfy the tourist gaze as described earlier.
  • Travel companies frequently play on the desire for novelty by using ‘exotic’ images and descriptions in their brochures.
• %%Tourist places and people are clearly being socially constructed in terms of ethnicity, gender, food and drink to stress the difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’ and enhance the elements of mystery and exoticism that attracts tourists.%%
• Recreation and tourism are increasingly attracting the attention of human geographers. In particular, tourism is of interest as a process of consumption, a product of place construction, and a reflection of difference.

Falsifying Place and Time

• Most distinctive tourist attractions are spectacles - such as sporting events or world fairs.

• Attractions created where there was previously nothing to draw visitors are often labelled artificial. It is correct to say that what matters in this kind of venture is innovation, creating something that people want - creating what is in demand.

• Important attractions of artificial sites:

  • offer a controlled and safe evironment
  • provide a glimpse into other cultures and places

• Interesting aspect of these artificial sites is that the experiences they offer are inauthentic; more about myths and fantasies than about reality.

  

Tourism in the Less Developed World

• In many less developed countries; tourism is growing in coastal areas in response to increasing demand from the more developed world.
• For many countries, tourism generates the largest percentage of foreign exchange. -
• Trend of development in tourism in countries, can create problems;
  • from an economic perspective, dependence on tourism can make a country vulnerable to the changing strategies of the tour companies in more developed countries.
• Benefits of tourism;
  • local employment
  • stimulation for local economies
  • foreign exchange
  • improvements in services such as communications.

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