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changes may also have the technology to
combat them. aghSuggested reading
Elins (2000).counterfactuals Literally contrary to the
facts: determining what might have been had
the facts been different. What if the Rhine
River never existed? What if in Florida in
November 2000, fewer chads were left hang-
ing? And, perish the thought, what ifThe dic-
tionary of human geographyhad never been
written? Posed as subjunctive conditional,
counterfactuals focus attention on comparing
the known case, the historical geographical
record, with what might have been the case
in a different possible world. Discussions of
counterfactuals are found in philosophy,
social psychology, political science, some
branches of economics and perhaps most
prominently in history (and through it,his-
torical geography). Also termedvirtual his-
tory, historians use counterfactuals to facilitate
clearer explanation of past events. For
example, to understand the rise of German
Nazism, Ferguson (1998) imagines twenti-
eth-century Europe without the First World
War. On that basis, he cannot conceive of the
emergence of the Third Reich, and so con-
cludes that the First World War must be its
cause. For a number of historians, however,
this is not history, but a form of fiction. The
economic historian M.M. Postan declared
that ‘the might-have-beens of history are not
a profitable subject for discussion’ (quoted in
Gould, 1969, p. 195). Withpostmodernand
post-structuralscepticism about the separ-
ation of fact and fiction, this kind of objection
is less convincing, and virtual histories bur-
geon both in academia and in literature
(Ferguson, 1999). tjbSuggested reading
Ferguson (1999).counter-urbanization Population decon-
centration away from large urban areas and
theirsuburbs, first identified in the USA in
the 1970s, where many metropolitan areas
were losing population through netmigration
to non-metropolitan areas. The growing areas
were generally relatively small settlements,
which were either increasingly accessible
forcommutingor offered attractive environ-
ments for retirees and home-based workers.
This changing population distribution was
paralleled by employment deconcentrationto smaller towns that offered cheaper, more
extensive tracts of land, more pliant (usually
non-unionized) labour forces, plus pleasanter
and less-congested environments and were
more accessible as transport costs were
reduced both absolutely and relatively (cf.
footloose industry). Similar patterns of
counter-urbanization were identified in many
other countries in the late twentieth century,
though there has been some ‘back-to-the
city’ recently, which has made the patterns
of change less clear-cut. (See alsoedge city;
sprawl.) rjSuggested reading
Champion (1991); Champion and Hugo (2004).creative destruction Thegeneralnotionthat
only through the demise of existing entities can
new ones be brought into the world. While
associated with thinkers such as Nietzsche and
Hegel, creative destruction as a distinct phrase
is best known to geographical audiences
through the work of the economist Joseph
Schumpeter. In his hands, it is both a descrip-
tion ofcapitalism’s disequilibrium dynamics
and a historical argument regarding the passage
to social democraticwelfare states. Against
the marginalist concerns of twentieth-century
neo-classical economics, Schumpeter
(1942) took up macro-economic questions in
the classical tradition (seepolitical econ-
omy). He argued that capitalist competition
induces entrepreneurs to innovate (and to
maintain a stable of scientists for the purpose),
resulting in qualitative changes to production
technologies that are fundamentally disruptive
totheexistingeconomiclandscape.Asopposed
to the smooth unfolding of technological
innovation, the equilibrium provided by the
market’s ‘hidden hand’, and theories of disrup-
tion caused by exogenous forces (e.g. weather,
war), Schumpeter saw capitalism as inherently
unstable, a condition that its citizens would
ultimately find intolerable. Schumpeter’s ideas
are often likened to those of Marx, important
differences being that the latter desired capital-
ism’s demise and located its chronic instability
less in competition than inaccumulationas
such (class-based extraction and investment
of surplus value: see Storper and Walker,
1989). It is, of course, in the spirit of the latter
that Harvey so often invokes ‘creative destruc-
tion’ in his construction of an explicitly
historico-geographical materialism and his
critical analyses oflandscapesof capital accu-
mulation (see, e.g., Harvey, 1989b: see also
marxist geography). gheGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 119 31.3.2009 9:45pmCREATIVE DESTRUCTION