The Dictionary of Human Geography

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conventionally adopted a specific spatial focus,

with enquiry usually directed at the intra-urban

and, occasionally, at the regionalscale.The

geographies of consumer behaviour and retail

organization are also frequently theorized as

some function of distance (distance decay),

actual or perceived.

This perspective has come under challenge,

as political economic and cultural perspectives

have been brought to bear on retail geography.

Initial insights were drawn from the allied field

of industrial geography, which saw the

import of Marxist perspectives into spatial–

economic analysis in the 1980s. One analysis,

by Ducatel and Blomley (1990), drawing from

Marxist insights into economic structure,

sought to re-theorize retailcapitalboth as a

vital component of a larger capitalist system,

and as characterized by its own internal logic

(seemarxist geography).

Although this re-theorization has been criti-

cized (Fine and Leopold, 1993), the call for a

political economic perspective on retail capital

generated a response, particularly in the UK.

The ‘new economic geographies of retailing’,

as Wrigley and Lowe (1996) styled them,

paid particular attention to the phenomenon

of retail restructuring. More recently, geog-

raphers have explored commodity chains

and power relations between retailers and

suppliers (Hughes, 2005).

Over the past decade or so, the ‘new retail

geography’ has become more attentive to the

cultural geographies of retailing. In line with a

more generalized recognition that economic

processes are culturally coded (seecultural

economy), retail geographers have again

become interested in questions ofconsump-

tion. However, consumption is not seen

simply as the unproblematic expression of con-

sumer demands, but is understood as a critical

site for the expression, reproduction and con-

testation of various identities (seeidentity).

One question, in this regard, is the way in

whichgenderroles are formed in retail spaces.

Certain retail sites – notably the department

store and the mall – have received particular

attention (Blomley, 1996). However, it is inter-

esting to see other retail spaces coming under

scrutiny, including the car-boot sale (Crewe

and Gregson, 1998). Excellent reviews of and

commentaries on this literature are provided by

Crewe (2000, 2001, 2003). nkb

retroduction A mode of inference (particu-

larly associated withrealism) in which events

are explained by postulating (and then iden-

tifying) the mechanisms by which they are

produced. Those mechanisms realize causal

powers, the potential causes of events that

have to be activated (as with the striking of a

match and the creation of fire): those powers

may not be observable (as with gravity) and

their existence has to be retroduced from

appreciation of observed events. rj

Suggested reading

Sayer (1992 [1984]).

retrogressive approach A method of work-

ing towards an understanding of the past by

an examination of the present (cf. retro-

spective approach). The term achieved wide

circulation through the work of Mac Bloch

(seeannales school), who insisted that the

analysis of past landscapes required the prior

analysis of the present landscape, ‘for it

alone furnished those comprehensive vistas

without which it was impossible to begin’.

Likening history to a film, Bloch argued that

‘only the last picture remains quite clear’, so

that ‘in order to reconstruct the faded features

of others’ it is first necessary ‘to unwind the

spool in the opposite direction from that in

which the pictures were taken’ (see

Friedman, 1996). dg

retrospective approach A method, prin-

cipally employed inhistorical geography,

the focus of which is understanding the present,

and which considers the past only insofar as it

furthers an understanding of the present (cf.

retrogressive approach). The retrospective

approach, much advocated by Roger Dion

(1949) in his study of French agrarian land-

scapes and similar to the historic-evolutionary

approach in classical Germancultural geog-

raphy, considers that an understanding of the

presentlandscapeposes problems of explan-

ation that can only be solved by a retrospective

search for their origins. cw

The study of the past for the light it throws

on the present (cf.retrogressive approach).

The approach would makehistorical geog-

raphya prerequisite for contemporary analy-

sis. Its most explicit advocate was Roger Dion

(seeannales school), who believed that a

consideration of the presentlandscapeposes

problems that can only be solved by a search for

their origins; but the approach can evidently be

extended beyond the analysis of the landscape

and has much in common with ‘genetic’ or

‘historical’explanationsmore generally. dg

Suggested reading

Baker (1968).

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_R-new Final Proof page 654 2.4.2009 9:12pm

RETRODUCTION