The Dictionary of Human Geography

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ways, TNCs are able to reduce their costs

and increase their profitability at the expense

of the jurisdictions in which they operate. rl

Suggested reading

Dicken (2007, ch. 8).

transferability One of Ullman’s (1956)

bases forspatial interactioncovering both

transport costs, which reflect the character-

istics of the transport system and thecom-

modity being moved, and commodity’s

ability to bear those costs. Precious metals

have high transferability, for example, because

they are easy to handle and transport costs are

small (per unit weight) relative to their total

value; plate glass has low transferability be-

cause it is difficult to handle and has relatively

low value. rj

transgression The act of crossing accepted

limits, of breaking rules or exceedingbound-

aries. Transgression challenges but also re-

veals and underlines the values considered to

be ‘normal’ and ‘appropriate’ in particular

geographical and social settings. It works

within and plays upon given spaces and con-

ditions, rather than operating from outside

them or seeking to constitute a new space or

system. Through the process and the reactions

to it, norms and codes about what is prohib-

ited and considered proper are highlighted.

For Bataille, whose writings have been par-

ticularly influential on understandings of the

concept, the ‘experience of transgression is

indissociable from the consciousness of the

constraint or prohibition it violates; indeed, it

is precisely by and through its transgression

that the force of a prohibition becomes

fully realized’ (see Suleiman, 1990, p. 75).

Transgression and the taboo therefore coexist

in a complex relationship, with the former not

denying the latter but transcending and com-

pleting it (see also Foucault, 1977b [1963];

Jenks, 2003).

geographyis important in the constitution

of limits and in demarcations of high and low,

normal and deviant, clean and polluted and

the like. Whilespaceis used as a means of

social control by the powerful, the resulting

socio-spatial orderings and codings may also

be potentially transgressed. Despite many

celebratory accounts of transgression, Stally-

brass and White (1986) insist that there is

nothing inherently politically progressive – or

conservative – about the process. In their in-

vestigation of the construction of European

bourgeois identity that ranges acrosssocial

formations, space and thebody, they exam-

ine the ways in which thatidentitywas de-

fined through the exclusion of what it deemed

‘low’, and how that expelled low ‘other’ be-

came a focus of desire as well as disgust. In

their view, transgression is often ‘a powerful

ritual or symbolic practice whereby the dom-

inant squanders its symbolic capital so as to

get in touch with the fields of desire which it

denied itself as the price paid for its political

power’ (1986, p. 210). The continual ‘redis-

covery’ of the carnivalesque within modern

culture and its importance as a semiotic

realm is related to its rejection in the constitu-

tion of bourgeois culture’s self-identity.

Analysing transgression is therefore a sig-

nificant means of understanding not only mar-

ginal acts, but also the processes by which the

normal, the central and the dominant become

defined. Transgression’s power comes in par-

ticular from its ability to expose the construct-

edness of socio-spatial orderings, and hence

their openness to criticism and to reconstruc-

tion. Transgression is distinct from resist-

ance, according to Cresswell (1996), in that

it does not rest on intentionality, but on its

effects and on the reactions it precipitates.

These cannot be defined in advance, but

have to be examined in particular geographical

and historical contexts. ‘Transgression’s effi-

cacy lies in the power of the established

boundaries and spaces that is so heretically

subverts,’ he states. ‘It is also limited by this

established geography; it is always in reaction

totopographiesof power’ (Cresswell, 1996,

p. 175). Yet, as he remarks, transgression can

contain ‘the seeds of new spatial orderings’. It

may, through becoming part of strategic strug-

gles, go beyond temporary tactical incursions

to contribute to social and spatial transform-

ation. dp

Suggested reading

Cresswell (1996); Stallybrass and White (1986).

transhumance Socially organized seasonal

movements of livestock along altitudinal and

bioclimatic gradients, usually in response to

changing availability of forage or water.

These movements differ from those associated

with nomadicpastoralism(seenomadism)in

that only a portion of the family (or other

social unit) associated with the herd makes

the journey, while the remainder of the family

remains at a more permanent dwelling. The

term was originally used in europe (the

French verbtranshumermeans to move live-

stock) to describe the movement of shepherds

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_T Final Proof page 770 31.3.2009 9:40pm Compositor Name: ARaju

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