Comp. by: LElumalai Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 9781405132879_4_T Date:31/3/09
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world. If poverty is a defining feature of the
(Two-)Third(s) – or ‘majority’ - World, it is to
be found in countries across the globe and not
just in the globalsouth. scoSuggested reading
Gilman (2003); Power (2003).Tiebout model An argument for dividing
an area among local government units that
compete for land users through the range
of ‘service-taxation packages’ offered (see
competitive advantage). Charles Tiebout
(1924–68: see Tiebout, 1956) argued that
inability to respond to the diversity of de-
mands forpublic goodsandservices(and
differing willingness to pay for them) gener-
ated by a heterogeneous population makes
large local governments inefficient.
Fragmentation of local government within
urban areas is more efficient: each unit tailors
the services offered and its taxation demands
to a particular population sector and people
choose which they prefer (cf.fiscal migra-
tion). The model assumes full information
about the range of ‘packages’ on offer and
no mobility constraints – which considerably
limit its empirical applicability. Fragmented
local government systems are frequently ma-
nipulated by the affluent and powerful to cre-
ate ‘tax havens’ from which, however, the less
well-off are excluded (cf.zoning). rjSuggested reading
See http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/VIP/
Tiebout.html and http://www.csiss.org/classics/
content/43.time The concept of time has been relegated
to an implied and secondary status in dis-
courses about thephilosophyofgeography
ever since the path-breaking work of Immanuel
Kant in the second half of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Arguing that both time andspaceare
distinct and necessarya priorinotions, rather
than substances, for any understanding of
human experience, Kant paved the way for
the creation of separate academic disciplines
addressing spatial rather than temporal ques-
tions in the nineteenth century. Advances in
many of thesciences during the twentieth
century questioned both the validity and the
wisdom of a categorical distinction between
space and time, however, notably the work on
‘spacetime’ by Hermann Minkowski (1864-
1909) and Albert Einstein (1879-1955), and
on ‘lived time’ by Jean Piaget (1896-1980),
and paved the way for more relativist andrelational accounts. Although in practice the
Kantian separation between time and space
advocated by Hartshorne (1939) never hin-
dered concrete geographical research (seehis-
torical geography), a theoretical attempt to
reconcile both was not launched until the
1970s and early 1980s as ‘time-geography’.
Emanating chiefly from Sweden but gaining
wide acceptance especially in Anglophone
human geography (Carlstein, Parkes and
Thrift, 1978), time-geography originated in
the work of Torsten Ha ̈gerstrand (1970). At
its roots is the realization that the spatio-
temporal choreography of individual paths
througheveryday lifeis constrained in a var-
iety of forms; theirvisualizationbecomes a
first heuristic step towards dissecting concrete
powerrelations operating within society. The
broad appeal of time-geography can be meas-
ured by its incorporation into the framework
ofstructuration theory(Pred, 1984).
The interrelationship between space and time
can be seen in many cultural practices. It was
clearly demonstrated by the establishment of
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in 1675,
which set a marker for many subsequent geo-
graphical designations and culminated in the
binding arbitration of global time zones in- The fact that such a system, which was
both locally and globally applicable, was cen-
trally involved in colonial conquests, the rise of
capitalismor in the gendering of social rela-
tions, is now well documented (Adam, 2006).
Knowing where one was at any one given time
was a prerequisite to ordering, hierarchically
structuring and eventually commodifying daily
routines, flows of goods and capital and some-
thing as mundane as travelling from A to B.
The standardization of time is connected
with the rise of railroad technologies in the
nineteenth century. At the beginning of that
century time was still measured locally, and
thus more accurately, but by the beginning of
the twentieth century most nations had
adopted some national time or time zones (al-
though calendars remain mired in cultural tra-
ditions to this day). Structurally akin to similar
attempts to de-localize or de-nationalize spa-
tial measurements – to wit, the standardization
of the metre in 1889 – such developments
ultimately paved the way for the all but uni-
versal adoption of ‘clocked time’, which has
since held sway over modern experiences, and
has perhaps most poignantly been criticized by
Charlie Chaplin in his 1936 filmModern times
(Glennie and Thrift, 2005, 2009: see also
modernity). However,globalization, and
the changing geographies brought about by
Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_T Final Proof page 755 31.3.2009 9:40pm Compositor Name: ARajuTIMETIME