respond to and intervene in such modalities
could or perhaps should disrupthuman geo-
graphy’s methodological and theoretical
practices.
Attention to emotions, or at least calls to
attend to emotions, have a long history in
human geography, being central, for example,
to the expansive version of what a human is
and does that was articulated by humanistic
geographies in the 1970s and, in particular,
to feminist interventions in social geography
(e.g., on fear, Pain, 2000). Current work on
emotional geographies is animated by two
intertwined sources – both of which resonate
with the attention inhumanistic geography
to thelifeworldand thetaken-for-granted
world, and perform a sensibility that attends
to the ebb and flow of everyday life. First, and
most prominently, there is the careful atten-
tion infeminist geographiesto the silencing
or repressing of differential, often gendered,
emotional experience and the subsequent
attempts to reclaim and give voice to emo-
tional experiences. Second, attention is paid
in non-representational theories to the
emergence, or individuation, of emotions from
within more or less unwilledassemblagesthat
gather together human and non-humanbod-
iesin broad fields of affect. These are by no
means mutually exclusive or internally coher-
ent perspectives – indeed, what is shared
between them is a commitment to the rela-
tionality of emotions and thus an assumption
that emotions are not contained by, or prop-
erties of, an individual mind. Yet the resulting
theoretical and methodological pluralism
raises questions about how to understand the
role of thesubjectin what an emotion is and
does, as well as broader questions of how to
develop conceptual vocabularies attentive to
differential emotional geographies. Both ques-
tions have been responded to through the
recent experimentations with techniques such
as practical psychotherapies (cf.psychoana-
lytic theory) and performative methods
(see performativity) that aim to witness
different emotional or affectual geographies
(cf. Tolia-Kelly, 2006). The importance and
interest of this new body of work is reflected in
the publication of a new interdisciplinary jour-
nal,Emotion, Space and Society(2008–). ba
Suggested reading
Anderson and Smith, (2001); Bondi (2005);
Davidson, Bondi, and Smith (2005).
empire An extensiveterritoryand polity,
encompassing diverse lands and peoples, that
is ruled, more or less directly and effectively,
by a single person (emperor/empress), sover-
eignstateor centralized elite, and without the
formal consent of all its peoples (cf. Lieven,
2005). The term is also used colloquially to
denote greatpowerand transcendent influ-
ence (as in ‘corporate empire’ and ‘reason’s
empire’), and the adjectives ‘imperial’ and
‘colonial’ are commonly used to characterize
actions and processes befitting empire.
Empire has taken diverse forms and eludes a
single meaning or explanation. Parallels have
been drawn between the evolution ofeurope’s
modern colonial empires, which reached their
heyday in the early twentieth century, and
since Roman times the ability to stretch power
over space has figured centrally in debates
about empire (seetime-space distanciation).
There have been over 70 empires in history –
including those created by the Romans, Incas,
Habsburgs and Ottomans, and by Britain,
Japan and the Soviet Union – and Niall
Ferguson (2004, p. 11) typologizes them in
terms in their metropolitan foundations,
declared aims, economic and political systems,
social character, and perceived benefits and
drawbacks. Important distinctions have been
drawn between ancient and modern, Western
and non-Western, maritime and land, and for-
mal and informal empires. And histories and
theories of empire have long varied in accord-
ance with: (a) the relative importance given to
six sources of power (economic, military, pol-
itical, geopolitical, demographic and ideo-
logical); (b) the ways and extent to which
sovereigntyis seen as unified or divided,
and power as centralized and totalizing or lim-
ited and localized; and (c) the impact that
empire has on theidentityof colonizing and
colonized peoples (Pomper, 2005).
The term derives from the Latin word
imperium, meaning ‘sovereign authority’, and
since the nineteenth century has been closely
associated with imperialismand treated as
pivotal to the globallyuneven development
ofcapitalism. Empire has long been used as a
term of abuse – as quintessentially exploit-
ative, and the duplicitous means by which
thewesthas sought to impose its values and
institutions (of reason,civilization, progress,
democracyand so forth) on others. But over
time, and still today, empire has also been
viewed in a more affirmative light – as tolerant
ofdifference, as a civilizing and modernizing
influence, and as the harbinger of global order
and a higher (perpetual) peace.
In recent years there has been a major revival
of interest in empire, which is tied to three setsGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_E Final Proof page 189 1.4.2009 3:17pmEMPIRE