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But in the short and medium term, petroleum
(and gas) will continue to drive the global
capitalist economy. The second meaning is
that oil-producing states that depend heavily
on oil revenues (as a proportion of exports or
as a proportion of GDP) – what are called ‘oil-
dependent economies’ in some circles (Le
Billon, 2005) – are specific sorts of capitalist
economy insofar as they are not simply reliant
upon oil as a source of energy but are forms of
rentier economy in which oil rents (royalties,
taxes, sales) are the driving the entire political
economy. Petro-capitalism is a particular type
of extractive economy in which oil revenues,
typically under state control, undergird an
ambitious programme of state-led develop-
ment and modernization (an exemplary case
would be the Shah’s Iran in the 1970s).
Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Equatorial Guinea
and Azerbaijan would be other cases of
petro-capitalism – though, it needs to be said,
they are customarily quite undisciplined and
corrupt forms of capitalism that ‘under per-
form’ in relation to comparable non-oil states.
Petro-capitalism in this second sense is associ-
ated with the ‘resource curse’ (Ross, 2001)
(see alsoconflict commodities). mwSuggested reading
Kaldor and Karl (2007); Shaxon (2006); Watts
(2004).phallocentrism Placing man at the centre; a
masculine way of representing and approach-
ing the world that some theorists root in male
genitalia and a masculine libidinal economy;
conceiving knowledge as neutral and univer-
sal, whilst refusing alternative knowledges;
knowledge that represent the interests and
perspectives of men. It is intertwined with
logocentrism,the fixing of meaning in hierarch-
ized binary oppositions (hence the termphal-
logocentrism). Phallocentrism acknowledges
women, but locates their identities only in
relation to men, contained within a series of
binarized concepts and terms: ‘It is because
sexual difference hides itself in other concepts
and terms, other oppositional forms – in the
distinctions between form and matter,
between space and time, between mind and
body, self and other, nature and culture, and
so on, that it remains the latent condition of all
knowledges and all social practices’ (Grosz,
2005, p. 177). Critiques of phallocentrism
have led French feminists such as He ́le`ne
Cixous and Luce Irigarary, and male philo-
sophers such as Jacques Lacan and Jacques
Derrida, to explore feminine (i.e. more openand multiple) ways of writing and reading, of
defining and investigating problems, including
a diversity of intellectual standards for know-
ledge production, and diverse ways of conceiv-
ing the relations between theory and practice.
Jardine (1985) terms such explorationsgynesis.
She regards the works of the male philo-
sophers in particular with some suspicion,
framing them as instances of male paranoia:
such men began to desire to be woman as
a way to avoid becoming the object of
female desire.
Phallocentrism is an important concept
within geography. Jardine (1985) attributes
the critiques of phallocentrism (e.g. a disbelief
in origins, master narratives, humanism and
progress) that developed throughout the twen-
tieth century to the end of Europeanimperial-
ism, as well as to the growing influence of
feminism. Critiques of phallocentrism have
been important to the process of rethinking
the concept of nature, because they are tied to
attempts to displace ‘man’ from the controlling
centre and to refigure nature in active, less
exploitative, terms. To the extent that human-
ism and phallocentrism are intertwined, the
critiques of that latter extend tohumanistic
geography. Framed through the analogous
concept ofmasculinism, Rose (1993) claims
that phallocentrism pervades geographical
knowledge. (See also gender;homophobia
and heterosexism;sexuality.) gpSuggested reading
Grosz (2005).phenomenology While the term ‘phenom-
enology’ was used in philosophy by
J.H. Lambert (1728–77), Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804) and Ernst Mach (1838–1916),
and is a vital part of G.W.F. Hegel’s
Phenomenology of spirit(1807), in the twentieth
century phenomenology began with Edmund
Husserl (1859–1938) and the elaborations of
his work by Martin Heidegger, Roman
Ingarden, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul
Sartre, Max Scheler, Alfred Schu ̈tz, Jacques
Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Alain Badiou
and Giorgio Agamben, among others (see
Kockelmans, 1967, pp. 24–5). For Husserl,
the definition of phenomenology was straight-
forward: it was himself and Martin Heidegger
(1889–1976).
Phenomenology entered human geog-
raphyin the early 1970s as a reaction to and
critique of the reductive and objectivist
approaches ofspatial science, and of the
structuralism and functionalism of someGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 528 1.4.2009 3:20pmPHALLOCENTRISM