pandemic (ad 1918–19), are extreme
examples from the many tens of thousands of
historically recorded disease outbreaks to
which the term ‘epidemic’ can properly be
applied (Kohn, 1998). msr
Suggested reading
Haggett (2000).
epidemiology The branch of medical sci-
ence that is concerned with the study of the
causes, distribution and control of health-
related events in a specified population.geog-
raphyand epidemiology have a long associ-
ation that can be traced back to the nineteenth
century and the use of disease maps to analyse
the causes ofepidemicevents (Gould, 1985).
Today, the association between geography and
epidemiology finds expression in a cross-dis-
ciplinary branch of medical geography
known as spatial epidemiology (Elliott and
Wartenberg, 2004). Spatial epidemiologists
map, analyse and model the distribution and
spread of health-related conditions and their
biological, environmental, behavioural and
socio-economic determinants over space and
through time. (See alsodisease, diffusion
of.) msr
Suggested reading
Cliff and Haggett (1988).
episteme A term introduced into modern
thought by the French thinker Michel
Foucault (1926–84) in his bookLes mots et les
choses, translated asThe order of things(1970
[1966]). The term is based on the Greek
word for knowledge or science, and for
Foucault an episteme is a system of thought
that conditions the particular sciences or know-
ledges (savoirs) that emerge at a particular time.
He identifies three main epistemes: the
Renaissance, the classical age and the modern.
It is within an episteme that we find the criteria
not just of individual pieces of knowledge, but
the rules that govern the production of truth
and reality as such. Foucault discounts an
understanding of absolute, atemporal, aspatial
knowledge, and instead analyses historically
specific forms of understanding that are the
conditions of possibility of knowledge (see
Foucault, 1972b [1969]). In this sense, he can
be understood as historicizing Kant’s work (see
genealogy). Foucault rarely used the term in
his later work, but introduced the notion of a
dispositif(1980c), which hedescribed as ‘a thor-
oughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of
discourses, institutions, architectural forms,
regulatory decisions, laws, administrative
measures, scientific statements, philosophical,
moral and philanthropic propositions’. The
notion of the episteme is now seen as ‘a specif-
ically discursivedispositif’ (cf.discourse). seSuggested reading
Gutting (1989); Han (2002).epistemology Concerned with defining
knowledge and explaining how it works.
Whileontologyattempts to account for what
is in the world, epistemology asks how it is
possible toknowthe world. Although often
considered in tandem, particularly in describ-
ing the constituent elements of a body of
thought, ontology and epistemology more
properly should be thought of as overlapping,
as there may be elements of ‘what is’ that are
not knowable, and knowledge may contain
ideas that do not correspond to existing things
in the world. Their conceptual complications
were made most explicit during the epistemo-
logical ‘turn’ in thehumanitiesand social
sciences, which was inspired by the linguistic
‘turn’ developed under thepost-structural-
ismof Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and
Judith Butler, among others. These connected
movements rejected Platonic epistemology,
which took knowledge to be innate and
discoverable by profound illumination, and
made it the product of circulatingdiscourses
and dispersedpowerrelations, which were
naturalized over time through their popular
uptake and transformation into common
notions (seehegemony). Among the political
consequences of this take on knowledge was a
dethroning of the notion of Truth, particularly
in itsapriori, universal articulation, as the lofty
goal of all acts of knowing. With the new, rising
wave of feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonialist
perspectives andactivisminandbeyondthe
academy, the classical notion that there are
absolute, knowable Truths that correspond to
things in the world was increasingly critiqued
as anenlightenmentinvention that reflected
the privileged position of white, Western mas-
culinity, the historical subjectivity holding sci-
entific, social and political knowledge-power
(Haraway, 1988; Rose, 1993). Rooted in
feminism,standpoint epistemology recognizes
the partiality of knowledge, but goes further
by arguing that the ‘worked-for’ or ‘struggled-
for’ knowledge generated by members of
oppressedgenders,racesandclassesis more
likely to capture truths than the uncritical and
comfortable epistemologies that evolve out ofGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_E Final Proof page 206 1.4.2009 3:17pmEPIDEMIOLOGY