The Dictionary of Human Geography

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objectivity The term ‘objectivity’ has at

least three distinct meanings ingeography.

The first is a relatively common everyday

one, where objectivity is associated with

impartiality or disinterestedness. Here, one or

another approach is said not to have a particu-

lar axe to grind, or any pre-set principles or

ideological positions to defend. This common-

sense understanding of objectivity has a paral-

lel in some of thehumanitiesand professions,

where objectivity derives from professionals

following well-established codes to guide the

careful marshalling of evidence, cross-

checking of sources and accurate and unbiased

presentation of information. Objectivity, in this

sense, is thought to derive from careful gather-

ing of information, mastery of the evidence and

‘balance’ in presenting an argument.

In a more profound sense, objectivity as an

element of scientific method refers to claims

about the characteristics of an object that are

said to exist independent of our perception of

it. In this view, objectivity presupposes some

form of unmediated or direct observation –

what Haraway (1985) called the ‘god-trick’ –

and became the basis for the claims by object-

ivistsciencethat it was merely mirroring

nature in a form that was unmediated and

‘value-free’ (seecartesianism).

Since the 1970s, many human geographers

have reacted against the objectivist conception

of objectivity. Drawing fromhermeneutics,

they acknowledged pre-judgements (‘preju-

dices’) as indispensable to a developing, dialo-

gical process of understanding. Drawing on

feminismandmarxism, they argued that all

claims to objectivity are ideological, denying

their histories, commitments and embedded-

ness in particular social institutions (see

ideology). As Habermas (1987a [1968]) pro-

posed, knowledge and human interests are

always necessarily connected. Critical human

geography insisted on the need for an ideology

critique to unmask the actors, interests and

consequences of such claims to objectivity

(Gregory, 1978a). A transcendental or univer-

sal ‘god’s eye’ view of objectivity was displaced

as critical human geographers turned to ana-

lyses of the role of social interests,human

agencyand institutions in shaping existing

and possible worlds (Harvey, 1974b). Thus,

a third meaning of objectivity sees knowledge

(including scientific knowledge) as always

historically and socially constructed out of

specific projects in particular times and places:

knowledge is always produced by someone;

knowledge and human interests are always

inextricably linked; and the production

of knowledge is a social practice like any

other with its own commitments, forms of

embeddedness and geographies (seesituated

knowledge). The turn to critical human

geographies of this kind marked a rejection of

grand narratives, and initiated a period of rich

methodological experimentation and the writ-

ing of more fallible and open geographies

(Natter, Schatzki and Jones, 1996, p. 1). jpi

Occidentalism The systematic construction

of ‘thewest’ (‘the Occident’) as a bounded

and unified entity. Occidentalism is often trea-

ted as the inverse oforientalism: just as

Western cultures systematically construct(ed)

stereotypes of ‘the Orient’, so non-Western

cultures produce(d) their own stereotypes of

‘the Occident’ (Carrier, 1995). Hence

Occidentalism has been described as aninver-

sion of the Western imaginary, ‘the world

turned upside down’, or as acounter-discourse

to Orientalism (Xiao-me Chen, 1995). Bonnett

(2005) has provided one of the most sophisti-

cated and sensitive readings of Occidentalism

in these terms. Writing against those who re-

gard the idea ofasiaas yet another exterior,

European construction, he reads two authors,

one Japanese and the other Indian, to show

how they used their independent construc-

tions of the west to explore non-Western

forms ofmodernity.

In contrast to all these versions, however,

Edward Said, one of the main architects of

the critique of Orientalism as a system of

power-knowledge, insisted that ‘no one is

likely to imagine a field symmetrical to [Orien-

talism] called Occidentalism’ because the

imaginative geographiesproduced by non-

Western cultures were not bound into a system

of power-knowledge comparable to the tensile

strength and span of moderncolonialism

andimperialism (Said, 1978, p. 50). For

Said, the distinctive quality of Orientalism

was its structural involvement in globalizing

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