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social agency that had been falsely ascribed
exclusively to humans (Latour, 2004, p. 21).
Taking up this argument, human geographers
have been exploring the intricate and dynamic
ways in which people, technologies, organisms
and geophysical processes are woven together
in the making and remaking of spaces, places
and landscapes. Three of the most important
currents in recent work in this vein have been
those addressing post-colonial, animal and
bodily reframings of what matters, what must
be taken into account, in the making of human
geographies.
The first current is concerned with showing
that the idea of nature as a pristine space out-
side society is an historical fallacy. This idea is
so pervasive today that it is difficult for many
of us to recognize it as a particular and con-
testable way of seeing the world. A specific
concern has been to expose the ways in
which the presence of native peoples was
actively erased from the landscapes that came
to be seen as wilderness in colonial European
eyes (seecolonialism), and that are now re-
vered by many environmentalists as remnants
of ‘pristine’ nature (e.g. Braun, 2002). The
second current extends this historical repudi-
ation of the separation of human society and
the natural world by paying close attention to
the mixed-up mobile lives of people, plants
and animals in everyday life time out of
mind. Here,animalshave become a vehicle
for opening up the ways in which non-human
creatures have long been caught up in all man-
ner of social networks, from farming to wild-
life, in ways that disconcert our assumptions
about their, and our, ‘natural’ place in the
world. The third, and perhaps most provoca-
tive, current of work in this vein explores the
bodily as an important site for geographical
research in which the human, quite as much
as the non-human, is molten in the heat of
technological achievements that recombine
the qualities associated with these categories
in new forms ranging from transgenic organ-
isms to bionic enhancements (e.g. Thrift,
2005a: see alsobody;cyborg). swneighbourhood An urban area dominated
by residential uses. While no fixedscalecan
be assigned, neighbourhoods have tradition-
ally been understood to be relatively small or
walkable, although they may vary considerably
in terms of population (Martin, 2003).
Neighbourhood has long been conflated with
the notion ofcommunityas described in the
work of the chicago school sociologists.
Neighbourhood is the more explicitlyterritorialconcept of the two. Efforts at defining and using
the term ‘neighbourhood’ fall roughly into four
areas: typologies (identifying primary neigh-
bourhood characteristics); neighbourhood
change; neighbourhood effects; and as a terri-
tory for political action (Martin, 2003).
Typologies of neighbourhoods draw upon
and also echo the conflation with community
in the Chicago School approach. These com-
bine physical and social features ofterritor-
ieswithin cities in order to classify each area
as some type (Hunter, 1979). The features
included in such typologies includeraceand
ethnicity,religion, family status, andclass
of the area population, housing tenure, age
and other infrastructure characteristics.
Neighbourhood types can then be correlated
withneighbourhood changeover time, drawing
upon the notion ofmobilityassociated with
the Chicago School and frominvasion and
succession.
Neighbourhood changefocuses on both popu-
lation andinfrastructure. Population may
change by one or more measures (such as
dominant ethnicity or household structure)
due to residential mobility (where people
move to a different area within acityor a
different location entirely). A neighbourhood’s
physical infrastructure changes due to
decline (due to age or active disinvestment)
or renewed investment (as with urban re-
newalorgentrification).
‘neighbourhood effects’approaches in-
vestigate neighbourhoods as loci of social
norms that shape individual attitudes, experi-
ences and health (Hunter, 1979; Ellaway,
Macintyre and Kearns, 2001). This literature
seeks to link individual outcomes with local
social and physical conditions. For example,
Ellaway, Macintyre and Kearns (2001) found
that individuals perceive theirhealthdiffer-
ently depending upon physical conditions of
the neighbourhood. However, Mandanipour,
Cars and Allen (2000) argued that structural
exclusions of the poor (e.g. uneven access to
resources, due to segregation) are more
powerful forces in an individual’s life chances
than local cultural factors.
An approach that highlights the contingency
of any definition of neighbourhood upon local
context and/or scholarly purpose is that of
conceptualizingneighbourhood as a territory for
political action(Martin, 2003). In this concep-
tualization, neighbourhoods are constituted
by practice: daily life and particular social
and political claims, which are dynamic over
time and space. The particular meaning of
neighbourhood – as a social community orGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_N Final Proof page 494 31.3.2009 3:13pm Compositor Name: ARajuNEIGHBOURHOOD