The Dictionary of Human Geography

have also come through place-specific studies
of changing everyday worlds andlanguage
under conditions of modernity that are atten-
tive to multiple practices and power relations
(Pred, 1990), and cross-cultural enquiries
into everydayness and its conceptualization
as a means of figuring cultural experiences
of modernity and capitalist modernisation
(Harootunian, 2000). Lefebvre’s own critique
needs situating within a French tradition of
everyday life theorizing that developed espe-
cially during the 1960s and 1970s in the con-
text of rapidmodernizationand processes of
decolonization, and that included de Certeau,
Roland Barthes, Georges Perec and thesitu-
ationists, as well as the surrealists before
them. This tradition’s influence is apparent
in much currenthuman geography, where it
has been taken up alongside phenomenological
and feminist writings to inform studies ofprac-
tice,performanceand embodiment as well as
narrative and rhythm in the construction of
space and time (Simonsen, 2004; see also
body). A concern with drawing out the extra-
ordinary within the ordinary and what Lefebvre
called ‘the minor magic in everyday life’ has
also occupied many geographers, including
those influenced by non-representational
theory, who have sought new means of
noticing the practical knowledge, skilled
improvisation and intuition involved in ‘the
elusive, phantasmic, emergent and often only
just there fabric of everyday life’ (Thrift,
2000d, p. 407). While much work on everyday
life has emphasized the resistant and subversive
tactics of ordinary people, drawing especially
on de Certeau (1984) in the process, some
writers are seeking to re-evaluate repetition,
habit, familiarity and the non-intentional
aspects of the corporeal as demanding fuller
attention in their own right. For others, it is
the utopian impulse concerned not simply with
describing everyday life but also with trans-
forming it for the better that remains so com-
pelling (see alsoutopia). dp

Suggested reading
Highmore (2002); Katz (2004); Lefebvre (2008
[1947, 1961, 1981]); Sheringham (2006).

evidence-based policy Evidence-based pol-
icy has been developed in reaction to interven-
tions based on inertia, expediency, opinion,
subjectivity and short-term political pressures.
The term refers to an approach to policy devel-
opment and implementation that uses rigorous
techniques to develop and maintain a robust,
high-quality, valid and reliable evidence base.

The approach began inhealth care(the term

‘evidence-based medicine’ first appeared in

1992) and has become a world-wide movement

in the Cochrane Collaboration (http://www.

cochrane.org/index0.htm), which aims to pro-

vide‘thereliablesourceofinformationinhealth

care’.Particular emphasis isplaced onrandom-

ized trials in which the recipient is randomized

to the new intervention (cf.sampling): the epi-

demiologist Archie Cochrane had famously

arguedthatresearchersshould‘randomiseuntil

it hurts’. The approach has been extended into

the social arena with the Campbell

Collaboration (http://www.campbellcollabora-

tion.org/), named after the distinguished social

science methodologist Donald T. Campbell.

This aims to answer the question ‘What

harms, what helps, based on what evidence?’

and a Centre for Neighbourhood Research

was created as part of the UK Network for

Evidence-based Policy and Practice (http://

http://www.evidencenetwork.org/).

The orthodox approach to evidence-based

policy is based on a systematic review finding

all the relevant studies including grey litera-

ture, weeding these for methodological flaws

and inconsistencies, ranking the evidence so

that the greatest reliance is placed on well-

designed randomized trials, and then combin-

ing valid evidence quantitatively in a meta-

analysis to provide the ‘weight of evidence’

supporting best practice. A heterodox view is

provided by Ray Pawson (2006), who argues

for what he terms ‘realist synthesis’ that

stresses generative mechanisms and causal

contingency, so that data analysis aims to find

‘what works for whom in what circumstances’

(cf.pragmatism). Consequently, there is not

a single ‘best buy’ for all situations, but a

tailored, ‘transferable theory’ that works in

these respects, for these subjects, in these

kinds of contexts. kj

Suggested reading

Davies, Nutley and Smith (2000); Torgerson

(2003).

exception, space of A topological space

produced when asovereign powerinvokes

thelawin order to suspend the law. Its mod-

ern formulation is closely associated with

right-wing political philosopher Carl Schmitt

(1888–1985), who declared: ‘Sovereign is he

who decides the exception.’ Italian political

philosopher Giorgio Agamben radicalized

Schmitt’s work to argue that it is the act of

deciding the exception that defines the sover-

eign: that this is the ground and origin of

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EXCEPTION, SPACE OF