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raises important questions about the relation-
ship between repressed and seduced.
Alongside the attention devoted to the soci-
alities of consumption, there is significant
work by geographers on the subjectivities
created through acts of consumption. For
instance, the centrality of consumption in con-
structions of thebodyis of growing interest
(Valentine, 1999), as is the emotional connec-
tion forged between people and the things that
they consume. Some are even beginning
to explore the emotional labour required to
dispose of old goods, noting they may be
incorporated into our personal biographies in
profound ways (Gregson and Crewe, 2003).
The fact that consumer goods may have long
and complex lives is also something that geog-
raphers have explored through attempts to
chart globalcommodity chainsand the ‘traf-
fic in things’ (Jackson, 1999). Transcending
simple distinctions between production and
consumption, tracing webs or networks of
commodity circulation not only offers an
important perspective ontransnationalism;
it also draws attention to the range of tech-
nologies, spaces and bodies involved in prac-
tices of consumption.
Although consumption was once regarded
as marginal to geographical enquiry, the sheer
variety of recent studies suggests that it is now
impossible to ignore thespatialityof con-
sumption. Indeed, perhaps the main impedi-
ment to the development of geographical
theories of consumption is the current ubi-
quity of consumer studies. Having quickly
reached a point at which a bewildering range
of activities are understood to involve con-
sumption, a key challenge facing human geog-
raphers is to decide whether consumption
remains a useful concept around which to
orient a vast and complex literature. phSuggested reading
Clarke, Doel and Housiaux (2003); Mansvelt
(2005).contextual effect The impact of local
environments on individuals’ attitudes and
behaviour. Much social science is based on
compositional effects, whereby attitudes and
behaviour are influenced by individuals’ non-
geographical position within society, such as
their socialclass: within any society, people
from similar backgrounds are assumed to
behave in similar ways, wherever they live.
According to arguments regardingcontextual
effects, however, because attitudes and behav-
iour patterns are to a considerable extentlearned through social interaction inplaces
(such as households andneighbourhoods),
similar people living in different sorts of
places may think and act differently as a
result of interactions with their neighbours.
Furthermore, many patterns associated with
compositional effects may themselves be the
results of aggregating contextual effects.
If behavioural norms are learned from local
models, national patterns are simply summa-
tions of those local practices over all places:
the national is an aggregation of the local.
The terminology regarding contextual
effects varies across disciplines. In economics,
for example, Brock and Durlauf (2000) distin-
guished among: endogenous effects, whereby
one individual’s behaviour is causally influ-
enced by that of other group members
(cf.endogeneity);exogenous effects, according
to which individual behaviour varies with the
observed attributes that define group member-
ship; andcorrelated effects, on the argument
that individuals in an area tend to behave in
similar ways because they either have similar
characteristics or face similar opportunities
and constraints.
The contrast between compositional and con-
textual effects strongly influenced thinking
withinhuman geographyin the 1980s, as char-
acterized by Thrift’s (1983) seminal paper
in which he deployed the structuration
approach to appreciate various forms of beha-
viour (such as the ‘life path’) as compositional
orderings within contextual fields. Citing
Therborn, he argues that ‘being in the world’
involves bothinclusive(being a member of a
meaningful world) and positional (having
a particular place in the world as defined by
characteristics such asgender,ethnicityetc.)
characteristics and that the processes of becom-
ing – learning about one’s positional situations –
are structured contextually inlocales.
Contextual effects underpinned much of the
early work on diffusion, notably through
Torsten Ha ̈gerstrand’s operationalization of
social contact and influence through the con-
cept of themean information field, and
their production was central to his conception
oftime-geography. More recently they have
been widely explored withinelectoral geog-
raphy, with studies showing that people are
very likely to share political attitudes with and
to vote in the same way as (the majority of)
their neighbours, irrespective of their social
positions (cf.neighbourhood effect). They
have also been identified in other fields, as
in studies of morbidity and mortality in
medical geography and of school effectsGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 110 31.3.2009 9:45pmCONTEXTUAL EFFECT