The Dictionary of Human Geography

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more or less temporally specific’, and they

are ‘productive time–spaces which have to be

produced’ (Thrift, 1996).

Another thematic corresponds to episte-

mology. Several philosophical sources inform

these discussions. Central are Martin

Heidegger’s phenomenology and Ludwig

Wittgenstein’s ideas of language games, some-

how intertwining with Michel Foucault’s ideas

of historically constituted and spatially formed

‘power–knowledge’. But also important is

Karl Mannheim, a pioneer of the sociology

of knowledge, who was one of the first to treat

ideas as socially situated (Situationsgebunden).

Part of these ideas, often mediated through

Donna Haraway’s notion ofsituated know-

ledge, has induced a new understanding of

the production of geographical knowledge.

Knowledge production is seen as a practical

activity that literally takes place and intervenes

within specific contexts. Different versions of

contextual knowledge circulate, but what gen-

erally connects them is a rather modest atti-

tude towards the powers of theory (cf. Thrift,

1996). Theories are of course vital and indis-

pensable accounts, but at the same time they

are always limited and partial: they are marked

by the contexts from which they emerge and

the circumstances that they are intended to

meet.

Common to contextual approaches is their

reference to dynamic, connected time–spaces.

More recent contributions both accentuate

and develop this point. Schatzski (2002), for

example, in what he calls a ‘siteontology’,

connects to practice and human coexistence.

Social sites, in this account, are contexts where

‘practices and orders form an immense, shift-

ing, and transmogrifying mesh in which they

overlap, interweave, cohere, conflict, diverge,

scatter and enable as well as constrain each

other’. In another way, Massey (2005), with-

out using the term, opens to a radically

dynamic vision of contextuality. She discusses

space in terms of interrelations, heterogeneity

and process, and connects it to time through a

double determination as ‘discrete multiplicity’

and ‘dynamic simultaneity’. This allows for

a conception of different time–spaces (or con-

texts) as relational; as ever-shifting constella-

tions of trajectories, constructed out of their

interrelations and ‘throwntogetherness’. ks

Suggested reading

Massey (2005); Simonsen (1991); Thrift (1996).

contiguous zone A zone of special jurisdic-

tional purposes contiguous to theterritorial

sea, which a coastalstatemay claim up to

24 nautical miles from the baseline for meas-

uring the territorial sea. The coastal state may,

in such a zone, exercise the control necessary

to: (1) prevent infringement of its customs,

fiscal,immigrationor sanitarylawsand regu-

lations within its territory or territorial sea;

and (2) punish infringement of such laws and

regulations committed within its territory and

territorial sea (United Nations, 1983, Art. 33).

This enables foreign nationals to exercise

numerous prerogatives, including rights of

navigation, overflying, fishing, conducting

research and laying submarine cables. sch

Suggested reading

Valega (2001).

continental shelf The Third United Nations

Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS

III) defines the continental shelf as ‘the natural

prolongation of the landterritoryto the outer

edge of the continental margin, or to a distance

of 200 nautical miles from the baselines from

which the breadth of theterritorial seais

measured’ (United Nations, 1983, Art. 76).

Where the continental margin extends beyond

200 nautical miles from the baseline, the coastal

statemust establish its outer edge with the

highly technical methods stipulated in Article

76 of the Convention. Thecoastalstateexercises

over the continental shelf ‘sovereign rights for

the purpose of exploring it and exploiting its

natural resources’ (United Nations, 1983,

Art. 77). sch

Suggested reading

Valega (1992).

continents Usually defined as ‘large, con-

tinuous, discrete masses of land’, the identifi-

cation of continents is both conventional and

contingent, because it is closely bound up with

the histories ofexploration,geographyand

geopolitics. Contemporaries divided the

Graeco-Roman world into three continents –

europe,asiaand ‘Libya’ (seeafrica) – but

as early as the fifth centurybceHerodotus

was puzzled ‘why three distinct women’s

names should be given to what is really a single

landmass’ (Lewis and Wigen, 1997, p. 22). In

medieval Europe, cosmographers and carto-

graphers retained this tripartite division but

saw the three as parts of a single ‘world island’,

orOrbis Terrarum. The European ‘discovery’

of theamericasfrom the late fifteenth century

followed by ‘the Great Southern Continent’ of

australia in the early seventeenth century

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