The Dictionary of Human Geography

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Pacific Rim A geographicalregionstretching

across the Pacific Ocean and incorporating the

westernmost cities of North America in add-

ition to Japan, Australia, and the coastal cities

and city-states of East Asia. The term became

prominent in the 1980s as a result of Asia’s

increased economic power and the intensifica-

tion of cross-Pacifictradeand financial link-

ages (Appelbaum and Henderson, 1992).

Academic and popular writings on the region

became so saturated with hyperbole that many

critics began to argue that the region was

itself a literary creation – one that served the

economic agendas andgeopolitical visions

of a pro-laissez-faireEuro-American audience

(see, e.g., Dirlik, 1993). km

Suggested reading

Appelbaum and Henderson (1992); Dirlik (1993).

pandemic A term (derived from the Greek

pan-, allþdemos, people), used in the health

sciences to describe the occurrence of a speci-

fied illness, health behaviour or other health-

related event that is unusually prevalent

(epidemic) over an extensive geographical

area. The term is often applied to periods

associated with the international spread of

major human infectiousdiseasessuch as chol-

era, influenza, plague and smallpox (e.g. ‘pan-

demic influenza’; see Patterson, 1986), with

the expression ‘global pandemic’ reserved for

periods of rapid worldwide transmission of a

disease agent. Global pandemic events of the

past 100 years include ‘Spanish’ influenza

(1918–19), El Tor cholera (1961– ) and the

Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome

(AIDS) (1981– ); see Kohn (1998). (See also

biosecurity.) msr

Suggested reading

Cliff, Haggett and Smallman-Raynor (2004).

Panopticon Philosopher and jurist Jeremy

Bentham’s design for a building, most com-

monly aprison, in which centralized power is

all-seeing –pan-opticon– is described in his

book of that title (1791; see Bentham, 1995).

Bentham’s design was for a circular building,

with rooms arranged around the circumfer-

ence, open at both ends, of one or more

storeys. The individual rooms, or cells, would

thus be illuminated from behind, and visible at

the front to a central tower. The occupant of

the tower would thus be able to look into each

and every cell from a fixed position. However,

it would be possible to construct a system of

blinds that prevented the occupants of the

cells from seeing into the control tower, and

so they would be unaware if they were being

observed at that point or not, or even if there

was an occupant in the tower. Not only would

they therefore be subject to external power,

they would turn that power on to themselves,

being self-disciplining. Bentham’s design was

suitable for any building in which it was neces-

sary or useful to be able to continually observe

individuals who would have no contact with

the other occupants, such as a school, a fac-

tory, a hospital, barracks, a poor-house or,

most commonly, a prison. Bentham’s design

was offered to the British government as a

model for the prisons being constructed as

transportation to the colonies became less

viable in the late eighteenth and early nine-

teenth centuries, but was only taken up in part

in model prisons such as Pentonville and the

Millbank Penitentiary. Panopticons were also

built outside Britain, including in Spain, the

Netherlands, the USA and Cuba.

Bentham’s model assumed a wider contem-

porary significance as a result of Foucault’s

1976a [1975] analysis of the Panopticon as

an exemplar of disciplinary power (see

Patton, 1979). Foucault saw the Panopticon

as the architectural conjunction of two models

of dealing with social problems, which he ana-

lysed as the problem of lepers and the problem

of the plague. With leprosy, victims were

excluded fromsociety; with the plague, they

were rigidly controlled from within. While ‘the

leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion ... the

plague gave rise to disciplinary diagrams’. In a

plague town there was a strict spatial partition-

ing, with careful surveillance, detailed

inspection and mechanisms of ordering.

These illustrate two models: a pure commu-

nity as opposed to a disciplined society. Both

are symbols of wider models ofpower,asis

the Panopticon in Foucault’s analysis. It is

the architectural fusion of these models, where

the organization of the plague town is brought

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 517 1.4.2009 3:20pm