of (interrelated) factors. First, there has been a
resurgence of scholarly interest in the history
and legacies ofcolonialism– one marked by a
comparative turn in the study of world history
that questions botheurocentricand nation-
centred histories of empire, and a heightened
concern with the ‘cultureof empire’ (Hall,
2000). Second, there has been vigorous debate,
particularly since 9/11, about whether the USA
should be regarded as an empire – ‘empire lite’
and ‘empire in denial’ being important slogans
in the debate (Dædalus, 2005: (seeamerican
empire)). Third, this debate feeds into a wider
discussion of whetherglobalizationis better
characterized as what Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri (2000, pp. xii–xiii) see as a
new age of empire that ‘establishes no territor-
ial center of power and does not rely on fixed
boundaries and barriers ... a decentred and
deterritorializing apparatus of rule that pro-
gressively incorporates the entire global realm
within its open, expanding frontiers’ (cf.
biopolitics).
Since the late 1980s, an increasingly diverse
geographical literature has critically examined
the historical links between geography(as
both a discipline anddiscourse) and empire,
sensitizing geographers to the Western-
imperial-white-male biases and assumptions
embedded in their disciplinary fabric. Close
critical attention has been paid to how ‘geo-
graphy’s empire’ (Driver, 2001a) was fashioned
at the level of knowledge andrepresentation–
as a form of epistemological violence –
through practices of exploration, mapping
and landscape representation, and determinis-
tic and divisive discourses onclimateand
race(Clayton, 2004; cf.geography, history
of). But geographers have also taken on board
a wider interdisciplinary attempt to complicate
understanding of empire’s rigid geography of
core and peripheryby recovering a commu-
nity of struggles over who was included and
excluded in definitions of empire andnation,
how lines and boundaries of difference were
drawn between citizen and subject (seeciti-
zenship), and the specific – andclass-,race-
andgender-inflected – imperial and colonial
locations (from museums to plantations) in
which such dynamics were enacted and settled
(Proudfoot and Roche, 2005).
Recent geographical research bears witness
to the contemporary liaison between geog-
raphy and empire in two further – if contrary –
ways: first, through geohazards research and
an emboldenedmilitary geography, which
are fired by GIS technologies and government
contracts, and which serve the perceived
securityandsurveillanceneeds of Western
states; and, second, through geographers’
oppositional engagement with America’s so-
called ‘waron terror’ (seeterrorism). In
two important studies of the historical and
contemporary geography of American imperi-
alism, Neil Smith (2003c) uses the political
influence of Isaiah Bowman – ‘Roosevelt’s
geographer’ – to question teleological
accounts of the passage from empire to
nation-state to globality, and recover the
imperial spatiality of American visions of
global development; and Derek Gregory
(2004b) explores the spatial strategies and
tactics – ‘colonising geographies’ – created
and deployed by the USA and its allies in the
middle east, showing how the USA now
bestrides a ‘colonial present’ in which it
exemptsitselffrominternationallaws, insti-
tutions and limits on behaviour, creating
‘spaces of exception’ (of confinement, banish-
ment and punishment) that strip people of
their dignity and most basichuman rights
(cf.biopolitics;exception, space of).
Three important insights that can be
gleaned from this range of recent work are
that: (a) past empires were less state-centred
than was previously thought, and current US
imperialism is more centred on the projection
of nation-state power than contemporary the-
orists such as Hardt and Negri have proposed;
(b) it is possible to analyse empires as both
unitary and fragmentary, and as potent yet
vulnerable apparatuses of power; and (c) his-
torical work on empire, and the recognition it
brings of the diverse ways in which power has
and can be exercised, is key to understanding
the nature and limits of empire today. dclSuggested reading
Howe (2002); Kirsch (2003); Lester (2006);
Lieven (2005).empiricism Aphilosophyoriginating with
the Greeks, and later formally codified by the
English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704),
that privileges experience of the outside world
above all else as the basis of knowledge, truth
and method. The contrast is with philosophies
that favour intuition, or self-revelation, or
rationalism; that is, philosophies underpinned
by internal mental processes independent
of external senses. Empiricism most overtly
enteredhuman geographythrough the dis-
cipline’s use of the standard scientific method,
which was most self-conscious during the
1960s, but which existed both before and
after in less explicit forms. This methodGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_E Final Proof page 190 1.4.2009 3:17pmEMPIRICISM