The Dictionary of Human Geography

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Despite the proliferation of indices, theID
and ISmeasures remain the most widely
used, perhaps due to their ease of interpret-
ation and mathematical simplicity. Also, these
indices are adaptable to other types of study.
For example, the same logic and formulae can
be used to measure the degree of occupational
segmentation, and in this case theISwould
indicate the proportion of a group that would
have to change occupations in order to have the
same distribution in thelabour marketas the
general population (e.g. Hiebert, 1999). dh

Suggested reading
Massey and Denton (1986); Peach (1975).

self-determination The perceived right of a
cultural group who identify with a particular
piece ofterritoryto control their political
future. The concept falls within the broader
politicalideologyofnationalism, but has a
specific focus on the politics of overthrowing
what is seen as unjust control of territory by an
external power. Self-determination has been a
rallying cry againstimperialismandcoloni-
alism, and is supported by the United Nations
Charter. Indigenous groups, such as Native
Americans and other ‘first peoples’, are con-
temporary advocates of self-determination
politics, following the wave ofdecoloniza-
tionafter the Second World War. cf

Suggested reading
Macedo and Buchanan (2003).

sense of place This term is usually taken to
refer to the attitudes and feelings that individ-
uals and groups holdvis-a`-visthe geographical
areas in which they live. It further commonly
suggests intimate, personal and emotional
relationships between self and place. Thus, in
early humanistic geography, a ‘sense of
place’ was understood largely in terms of posi-
tive affective qualities of place-attachment;
that is, senses of affection, attachment and
belonging and even ‘love of place’ (topophi-
lia: see Relph, 1976; Tuan, 1977). Such work
belongs to a long-standing (and still influen-
tial; see Casey, 1998) phenomenological
tradition in which place is presented as the
meaningful, even potentially redemptive
counter to abstract, rationalist and unlocalized
notions of ‘space’. However, the more critical
approaches characteristic ofsocialandcul-
tural geographiesfrom the 1980s onwards
have more often sought to highlight how such
positive senses of place andidentitymay in
fact often be based upon the symbolic and

physical exclusion of those deemed to be
‘out-of-place’ (Cresswell, 1996).
Equally, much early work on senses of place
(e.g. Relph, 1976) subscribed at least impli-
citly to a particular historical narrative in
which supposedly authentic or original forms
of place-basedcommunityor dwelling are
seen as being progressively eroded by eco-
nomic and cultural forces such asurbaniza-
tion,industrializationandglobalization.
These forces are understood as working to
occlude the distinctiveness of particular places
and cultures, so producing an increasingly
‘placeless’ world. But in explicit contrast to
such accounts, Doreen Massey’s (1994a) influ-
ential essay on a ‘global sense of place’ sought
to advance a conception ofplaceas porous,
outward-looking and progressive, as opposed
to conservative, enclosed and unitary. The
development of a progressive sense of place,
for Massey, involves rejecting false nostalgia
for pre-modern singular and coherent places,
and embracing instead the culturally multiple,
dynamic and connective aspects of place in
a globalizing world.
While Massey’s work has opened up new
agendas for geographical research on senses
of place, older usages of the term, in which
senses of attachment and belonging are fore-
grounded as investigative objects, continue to
be productively elaborated and refined, most
notably in Feld and Basso’s (1998) North
American-based collectionSenses of place.jwy

Suggested reading
Feld and Basso (1998); Massey (1994); Relph
(1976).

sequence analysis An exploratory data
analysis technique for analysing longitu-
dinal data. Social behaviours, such as hous-
ing careers defined in terms of tenure and
price (Clark, Deurloo and Dieleman, 2003),
are likely to be patterned with many sequences
that are only trivially different across different
households. Unlike other techniques, such as
event history analysis, the aim is not to work
spell by spell, trying to account for the transi-
tion from one state to another. In contrast,
sequence analysis works holistically (Pollock,
2007), classifying ordered sequences into a
relatively few characteristic trajectories and
then seeking to examine what determines mem-
bership of a particular trajectory. Trajectories
can be defined in both time and space, so that
this approach can be used to identify common
time-geographic paths (Shoval and Isaacson,
2007).

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