The Dictionary of Human Geography

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in the mall or buying into the dream of a better

life withincapitalism(seeideology).

In the 1980s, cultural and political geog-

raphers began to explore some of these con-

structions ofhegemony, drawing usefully on

the work of Antonio Gramsci.feminist geog-

raphiesalso explored the different ways in

which relations ofpatriarchywere embedded

and understood in different parts of the world

(Rose, 1993), and explored questions of

resistanceto power, including discussions of

the weapons of the weak (Hart, 1991; see

feminist geography). In the 1990s these

explorations were significantly extended as

geographers began to draw more broadly on

the work of Michel Foucault, and through him

the work of Edward Said and other theorists of

post-colonialism or post-structuralism.

John Allen (2003) has suggested that power

can be thought of as an inscribed capacity

inhering in certain agents andnetworks;asa

resource; and as a set of strategies, dis-

coursesand technologies of government (see

biopower;disciplinary power;governmen-

tality). This last view of power begins to hint

at the richness of Foucault’s legacy to the

human sciences. Foucault (2001) recognized,

as some of his followers have not, that power

can be enabling. For the most part, however,

geographers have read Foucault as a guide to

the ways in which power inhabits and flows

through all of the ‘capillaries’ of modern life.

They have also taken from Foucault the

notion that power is strongly territorialized. It

is embedded in jurisdictions that run from the

humanbody(powerfully disciplined by ideas

of ‘normal’sexuality, for instance), through

the organization of schools, hospitals, asylums

(Philo, 2004) andprisons, and on to the con-

struction ofboundariesthat express ideas of

inclusion and exclusion. Power, in this view,

can be challenged, critiqued and contested –

this is the job of an oppositional social science

• but it cannot be transcended: the line to
  Foucault runs through Weber and Nietzsche
  more strongly than it does from Marx.
  The idea that power animates all spatial
  practices, and that power is always spatialized,
  is now widely understood ingeography.So
  too is the idea that power is most effective
  when it is least visible.critical human geog-
  raphyseeks to denaturalize some of the most
  powerful discourses that are at play in the
  subject – ideas ofdevelopment, for example,
  or thewest,orwhiteness. In so doing, it aims
  to reveal other ways of assembling power and
  knowledge. At the same time, however, as
  Harvey’s work on the new imperialism

reveals, some geographers are also concerned

to keep their eyes focused on materialist con-

ceptions of power, and the powers ofcapital

and thestate. When it was revealed that the

Bush administration in the USA was pursuing

a policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’ (the

alleged torturing of suspected ‘terrorists’ in

prison camps outside the USA), it became

clear that work on the sovereign powers of

states (Agamben, 1998: seeexception, space

of) had to be linked to work on spatial strat-

egies of demarcation, Othering and distancia-

tion (see Gregory, 2004b, on the Israel–

Palestine conflict), and to robust accounts of

the deployment of US power in an age ofneo-

liberalism(Smith,2005a). sco

Suggested reading

Corbridge, Williams, Srivastava and Ve ́ron

(2005); Gregory (2004b); Lukes (2005);

Mamdani (2004).

power-geometry The more or less system-

atic and usually highly uneven ways in which

different individuals and groups are positioned

withinnetworksofflowsand interactions.

These variable positions derive from the

intimate connections that exist between pro-

ductions ofpowerand productions ofspace:

spatial modalities of power are differentially

engaged such that different actors in different

places have different degrees of freedom. The

concept was proposed by Doreen Massey

(1993) as both a critique of David Harvey’s

concept oftime__space compressionand an

attempt to open up conventional, ‘bounded’

conceptions ofplace.

Massey (1993, pp. 60–1) argued that

Harvey (1989b) had emphasizedcapitalism

to such a degree that his account of time–

space compression collapsed into an econo-

mism, and paid so much attention toclass

that he failed to acknowledge the wider range

of social positions that were involved, includ-

inggender. In short:time–space compres-

sion ‘needs differentiating socially’. In

parallel, Gregory (1994, p. 414) argued that

the process also needs to be differentiated

spatially: there is a complex geography to

time–space compression. The concept of a

power-geometry speaks to these twin con-

cerns. It was developed independently of

actor-network theory, with which it has

some affinities, but it provides a multidimen-

sional conception of space that is intended to

be unwaveringly political in its orientation.

positionalityis crucial to power-geometry

(see also Sheppard, 2002). From the outset,

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 576 1.4.2009 3:20pm

POWER-GEOMETRY