The Dictionary of Human Geography

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underscores colonialism’s inherently frag-

mentary character, and sees both colonialism’s

civilizing mission and ‘third world’ nation-

alisms and revolutionary movements as

doomed to failure and self-interest. One the

other hand, geographers operating at the for-

mer margins of empire complain about the

metro-centric focus of both older imperial his-

tories, and newer critical accounts of the col-

onizing impact that metropolitan-based

initiatives (such as cartography and travel)

had on outlying regions. Viewing the colon-

ized world from the (former) imperial centre –

which is where a good deal of critical work on

geography and empire emanates from – can

blunt understanding of the specific and chan-

ging composition of colonial power in particu-

lar localities (Harris, 2004).

With regard todiscursivity and dislocation,

geographers have considered how a wide range

of spatial practices and representations of

space work as colonizing discourses – as text-

ual and visual ‘scriptings’ and ‘spaces of con-

structed visibility’ that have shaped what

Europeans understood to be ‘out there’ and

framed how interaction was to proceed and be

recorded (Duncan and Gregory, 1999). In

prosecuting such ideas –travel writingbeing

a prime focus – geographers have been critical

of the reduction of colonialism to issues of

discourseand representation, and a concomi-

tant erasure of historical–geographical specifi-

city, which has characterized much (especially

literary) work in this area, and have coined

expressions such as ‘spaces of knowledge’

and ‘geographies of truth and trust’ to under-

score the materiality of discourse and the situ-

ated and embodied nature of colonial knowledge

and power (Gregory, 2001b). Nevertheless,

much of this literature has been preoccupied

with the agency and texts of European/

Western/colonizing projects and actors, and

either overlooks native agency or subordinates

indigenous knowledge to the gaze of the

Western/metropolitan/post-colonial critic by

representing it as the background noise against

which the colonizing West stakes its claims to

truth and power. While the difficulties involved

in bringing native agendas and ‘other’ voices

back into the colonial spotlight should not be

underestimated, work that aims – laudably –

to expose and question previously undisclosed

connections between discourse and domin-

ation runs the risk of reinforcing the ideas,

images and categories (of, for example, exoti-

cism, primitivism and race) that it sets out

to challenge. It does so, in part, Nicholas

Thomas (1993) has pointed out, by

obfuscating how colonial encounters operate

as two-way and intersubjective (albeit still

unequal) processes rather than as a one-

way projection of desire and fear, or as a

unitary imposition of power (see also

transculturation).

All of this helps to dispel the illusion of a

seamless or ineluctable process of Western

expansion, and makes the current promulga-

tion of a ‘post-colonial geography’ that seeks

to assess what about geography (as a discip-

line, discourse and practice of power) might

need decolonizing more than a belated or

ironic gesture, as some have suggested. dcl

Suggested reading

Blunt and McEwan (2002); Cooper (2005);

Gregory (2004); Said (1993, 2003 [1978]).

command economy An economy in which

the means of production are owned and con-

trolled by thestateand in which central plan-

ning prevails. The term is used to distinguish

economies, such as those in Eastern Europe

until the early 1990s, from eithercapitalism

or a mixed economy. The dismantling of com-

mand economies in Eastern Europe reflected

an inability to produce goods in the quantities

that people had come to expect, as a result of

difficulties of coordination and the lack of effi-

ciency incentives. However, the economies

that replaced them have their own imperfec-

tions, including large-scale criminalization,

reflecting the difficulty of creating market-

regulated economies in former socialist states

(cf.socialism). dms

commercial geography A forerunner of

economic geography concerned with

describing, tabulating and cartographically

representing the geographical facts of com-

merce for practical, business ends. Coined by

the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

in the late eighteenth century as one of his six

divisions of geography, commercial geog-

raphy was systematically taken up by German

geographers from the middle of the nineteenth

century. In Britain, the Scottish geographer

George Chisholm (1850–1930) provided the

first English-language version of the project

in his 1889 tome,A handbook of commercial

geography, and identified three sections: how

commodities are produced, what commodities

are produced and where commodities are

produced. Chisholm provided no indication

of the complexity of the concept ofcommod-

ity, however, and seven years before his book

was published the German geographer Go ̈tz

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 98 31.3.2009 9:45pm

COMMAND ECONOMY