The Dictionary of Human Geography

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wars upon the male population, infanticide

and the movement of boom–bust cohorts

(Momsen, 1991). The figure for France is

typical of populations of the global North. It

shows the general influence of ageing, which,

because of lower male life expectancy,

produces a strong excess of women in the

over-70 age groups. The recent decline in birth

rates is also evident in the shortfall in those aged

under 25 years. The demographic conse-

quences ofwarare also apparent in the pyra-

mid; for example, the sharp decline in births

during the First World War is reflected in the

shortfall in the numbers of people in their late

seventies and early eighties. In countries of the

global South, population pyramids are more

steep-sided, reflecting higherfertility(which

adds more people to the base of the pyramid)

and highermortalitythrough the life course,

that steadily removes them. ajb

Suggested reading

Shryock and Siegel (1973).

populism An enormously complex term that

refers to both politicalideologiesand eco-

nomicdevelopmentstrategies that are bound

upwith notions ofthe ordinary, the people, anti-

industrialism and small-scale enterprise (‘small

is beautiful’). Populism as practice can be seen

as a counter-current, a minoritydiscourse,to

the rise of industrialcapitalism. While certain

lines of populist thinking can be traced to pre-

industrial Leveller and Digger movements of

seventeenth-century England, the intellectual

origins are typically traced to Sismondi and the

Ricardian socialists (Kitching, 1982).

Kitching notes that there are two senses in

which populism is employed. One turns on its

opposition to large-scale urban manufactureand its

promotion of small-scale, moral, efficient enter-

prises,andtheotheronaparticularsortofpolitics

inwhichaneffortismadetomanufactureanational-

collectivewill(seealsohegemony;nationalism).

Populist political strategies andrhetoricsres-

ide in what Laclau (1977) calls a double articu-

lation: first, the creation of a stable bloc

consisting of the people and powerful classes;

and, second, the discourses by which ‘the

people’s’ interests are configured with those of

other classes (seeclassandstate). Populist

movementscan,forexample,encompassfarmer

radicalism, agrariansocialism, populist dicta-

torship (Peronism), populistdemocracyand

urban social movements(Canovan, 1981; see

also squatting). Populist, or neo-populist,

development strategies can include peasant

co-operatives, the informal sector, land reform

and third world flexible specialization

(Kitching, 1982). A powerful line of populist

thinkingindevelopmentgeographyandagrarian

studies includes the work of Chayanov (see

peasant). mw

Suggested reading

Canovan (1981); Laclau (2006); Watts (1995).

pork barrel An American term for the

unequal distribution ofpublic goodsin order

to promote a political party’s or candidate’s re-

election prospects. Pork-barrelling is usually

associated with legislators obtaining benefits

for the spatially defined constituencies that

they represent, but the term is also used more

generally to refer to any apparent government

favouritism of particular areas. rj

positionality The fact that a researcher’s

social, cultural and subject positions (and

other psychological processes) affect: the

questions they ask; how they frame them; the

theories that they are drawn to; how they read

• Bondi (1999) draws a distinction between
  intertextual and experiential reading; their
  relations with those they research in thefield
  or throughinterviews; interpretations they
  place on empirical evidence; access to data,
  institutions and outlets for research dissemin-
  ation; and the likelihood that they will be
  listened to and heard. Debates about position-
  ality have been ongoing since the 1980s, espe-
  cially within feminism and feminist
  geographiesand among those usingqualita-
  tive methods. They emerge with the under-
  standing that all knowledge is partial and from
  particular perspectives, embedded within
  powerrelations. In a highly influential state-
  ment, Haraway (1989) distinguished between
  situated knowledgeandrelativism, arguing
  that attending to positionality, as it is mediated
  by particular technologies for seeing (such as
  quantification, mapping and survey method-
  ologies), is the route toobjectivity(rather
  than a sign of subjectivism), and a way of
  making responsible knowledge claims that
  simultaneously chart their limits and create
  opportunities for developing connections
  across different types of knowledges.
  Approaches to positionality have changed
  over the years, reflecting changing theories of
  subjectivity. In early discussions, positional-
  ity often took the form of self-critical intro-
  spection, through which researchers attem-
  pted to position themselves within power
  relations (often as middle-class, white and
  Western) in order to understand how this

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POPULISM