The Dictionary of Human Geography

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revealed preference analysis Statistical

methods, many based onmulti-dimensional

scaling, for deriving an aggregate set of deci-

sion-rules from a series of individual decisions,

as in the choice of shopping centres by

consumers. The individual choices are termed

examples ofbehaviour in spaceand are particu-

lar to a given configuration (the distribution of

shopping centres in one town, for example).

The general rules, unconstrained by any

particular arrangement, are the revealedrules

of spatial behaviour(Rushton, 1969). Studies

of other behaviours – such as voting – use

similar approaches. (See alsobehavioural

geography.) rjj

Suggested reading

Poole (2005).

rhetoric The term is classically defined as the

art of persuasion and eloquence. The history of

Western thought could be understood as a long

quarrel between serious reason and rhetoric.

From one perspective, enlightenment,

rationality and science overcome religion,

superstition and magic. A counter-narrative

sees in this process only the subordination of

visceral, creative pluralism to soulless reason.

The quarrel turns on a shared set of opposed

pairs: reason versus passion, fact versus opin-

ion, neutral versus partisan –reason versus rhet-

oric. This opposition underplays the extent to

which rhetoric, as a classical discipline, was

concerned with the ways in which audiences

could be swayed through a combination of

both reason and emotion. The epistemological

significance of a consideration of rhetoric does

not, therefore, lie in completely debunking the

idea of truth. Rather, it requires a rethinking of

the idea that the task of knowledge is for

an observer to represent an independent exter-

nal reality in a transparent medium: rhetoric’s

concern with the joint, shared aspects of gain-

ing assent and persuading others suggests a

contextual account of the justification of know-

ledge and belief (see alsoepistemology).

Ingeography, rhetoric has become a focus

of attention in the wake of a more general

revival of interest in this topic inphilosophy,

anthropology, linguistics, literary studies and

history (White, 1978; Clifford and Marcus,

1986; Nelson, Megill and McCloskey, 1987).

This engagement has led to a greater degree of

reflexivitytowards the rhetorical strategies

prevalent in the discipline, and how these

inscribe particular orientations to audiences

and publics. But geography’s treatment of

rhetoric has tended to fall into the familiar

oppositional pattern noted above. The charac-

teristic reduction of rhetoric to metaphor

reinstalls the world/word binary. Interest in

rhetoric has therefore been mainly restricted

to debunking of the truth-claims of various re-

search fields, as a kind of renewedideology-

critique. On this view, the rediscovery of rhet-

oric helps us to see that all orthodoxies and

norms are really just contingent constructs,

whose reproduction is neither natural nor rea-

sonable, but is really the effect of rhetorical

strategies as part of political agendas.

There remain two areas in which a consider-

ationofrhetoricmightstillhaveacreativeimpact

on research agendas inhuman geography.

First, therhetorical-responsiveaccount of action,

practice and subjectivity developed by Shotter

(1993), and building on the tradition of Gilbert

Austin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Kenneth Burke, Rom

Harre ́, Paul Ricoeur, Lev Vygotsky, Ludwig

Wittgenstein and others, retains its potential for

redeeming the concept of discourse from the

prevalent representational construal to which it

has been subjected in geography, by returning it

to a fuller sense of language-in-use and lan-

guage-oriented-to-action (cf.representation).

This in turn would have implications for meth-

odological analysis of both archival data and

talk-data generated infocus groups,inter-

viewsand ethnographic situations (seeethnog-

raphy). Second, understanding rhetoric as the

efforttomoveand affectaudiencesthroughvari-

ous modes of appeal and persuasion points

towards an alternative approach to the analysis

ofpublic spacethat investigates the different

types of rhetoricalforcethat are deployed to con-

vene publics (Barnett, 2007). cb

Suggested reading

Fish (1995); Smith (1996).

rhizome Botanically, a rhizome is an under-

ground system of stalks, nodes and roots

through which a plant spreads horizontally and

sends out new shoots. Themetaphoricaluseof

the term has been associated with the philoso-

phy of Gilles Deleuze and Fe ́lix Guattari

(1987). For them, that which is rhizomatic is

counterpoised to that which is arborescent, or

tree-like. Unlike vertical and hierarchical arbor-

eal structures, rhizomes are comprised of non-

hierarchicalnetworkswithin which there are

many ways to proceed from one point to

another. According to Deleuze and Guattari,

such rhizomatic networks are resistant to and

disruptive of ordered vertical and thusstriated

spaces, such as those of thestate(see alsopost-

structuralism). ajs

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RHIZOME