The Dictionary of Human Geography

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A key part of the approach is that ordered

sequences are clustered into a data-driven

typology, according to some algorithm such

as ‘optimal matching’ (Abbott and Tsay,

2000), which grew out of techniques devel-

oped during the 1980s and employed by bio-

chemists to analyse DNA sequences. This

works by measuring the dissimilarity of every

pair of sequences by calculating the relative

effort (the ‘cost’) needed to transform one

sequence into another. Transformations are

of three types – substitutions, insertions, dele-

tions – and the user may attach a differential

cost to each type of change so that, for

example, moving from the rented sector to

owner occupation may be given a higher cost

than the opposite move. Dissimilarity is then

defined as the minimum cost of transforming

one sequence into another; the overall matrix

of dissimilarities between all pairs can then

be input to a cluster analysis, which groups

together similar paths (cf. classification

and regionalization). The popularity of the

approach can be expected to increase as more

longitudinal data and general-purposesoft-

ware for quantitative analysis become

available (Brzinsky-Fay and Luniak, 2006).kj

Suggested reading

The publicly available software Transition Data

Analysis has facilities to undertake sequence an-

alysis (http://steinhaus.stat.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/

tda.html).

sequent occupance ‘The view of geography

as a succession of stages of human

occupance .. .which establishes the genetics

of each stage in terms of its predecessor’

(Whittlesey, 1929; cf.settlement continu-

ity). As this suggests, Whittlesey – like other

European and North American geographers in

the early twentieth century – was strongly influ-

enced by biologicalmodels. He acknowledged

that the analogy between ‘sequent occupance

inchorology’ and plant succession in botany

would be ‘apparent to all’, but he insisted that

his own conception of cultural–historical geog-

raphy was more intricate. While ‘human occu-

pance of area, like other biotic phenomena,

carries within itself the seeds of its own trans-

formation,’ such uninterrupted or ‘normal’

progressions would be ‘rare, perhaps only

ideal, because extraneous forces are likely to

interfere with the normal course, altering either

its direction, or rate, or both’ and ‘breaking or

knotting the thread of sequent occupance’.

Whittlesey’s thesis directly resembles Frederick

Jackson Turner’sfrontier thesis: both men

came from the American Midwest, and the

transition from rural to urban societies

was within living memory for them and their

contemporaries. The idea was used more

loosely by later cultural geographers to refer

to little more than the claim thatcultural

landscapes contain traces from the earlier

stages of settlement (cf. Broek, 1932, which is

usually regarded as the classic application).

The biologicalmetaphorwas in decline in

social science even as Whittlesey was writing,

however, and in some ways the popularity of

the thesis reflects the (then) isolation ofhuman

geographyamong the social sciences in North

America (Herbst, 1961). gk

Suggested reading

Whittlesey (1929).

services Services have historically been

defined as ‘activities which are relatively

detached from material production and which

as a consequence do not directly involve the

processing of physical materials. The main

differences between manufacturing and ser-

vice products seems to be that the expertise

provided by services relies much more directly

on work-force skills, experience, and know-

ledge than on physical techniques embodied

in machinery or processes’ (Marshall, Wood,

Daniels et al. 1988, p. 11). Geographers have

produced a substantial and still growing cor-

pus of work on services, one by-product of

which has been to confirm the difficulty of

working with these sorts of general statements.

It is clear that there is no single geography of

services, and there are diminishing conceptual

returns of thinking of services in this way.

Rather, there is a whole set of different geog-

raphies of services, which vary according to

the characteristics of the specific industry.

The most recent definitional work has used

binaries – either/ors – to produce more specific

definitions. So, terms such asproducer ser-

vicesor consumer services,public services

or private services, and tradeable or non-

tradeable services have been used. While these

distinctions are an improvement on past gen-

eralizations, they pose their own problems.

How to move beyond oppositional definitions?

What is it that binds different services together

or distinguishes them? For some, rather than

seeing manufacturing and services as discrete,

as separate entities, there is a need to concep-

tualize thecommodity chainsor production

networksthat link them (Henderson, Dicken,

Hess, Coe and Yeung, 2001). If we trace these,

then we generate a different set of insights into

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SERVICES