cell, and stores, redistributes and releases
about 30 per cent of the total amount of solar
energy that hits the Earth (Clarke, 1993). To
some extent a renewable resource, water’s
availability is nevertheless finite and depen-
dent on regional variations, seasonal fluctu-
ations andclimatechange, as well as being
subject to sustained, and sometimes violent,
local andgeopoliticaldisputes.
Water resources are powerfully shaped by
human actions, including reduction of the
Earth’s storage capacity through development
of the built environment (e.g. in the suburban
expansion of major cities around the world);
the degradation of water quality throughpol-
lution (e.g. in the arsenic poisoning of
groundwater wells in Bangladesh and West
Bengal); and the overuse or mismanagement
of water resources that makes them scarce
(e.g. in the 1930s Dust Bowl in the Great
Plains of the USA). Water has also attracted
monumental feats of civil engineering and
technological governance throughout human
history, and has been frequently tied up with
the constitution ofnation-statesand national
identities (seenationalism). The mega-dams
that became emblems of the assertion of inde-
pendence of sovereign states (re)-emerging
from the yoke of Europeanimperialism in
the second half of the twentieth century are
one example. Another is the long history of
sustained engineering that has gone, and con-
tinues to go, into stabilizing the low-lying
territory of the Netherlands (Bijker, 2005).
Human geographers have made important
contributions to understanding the material
cultures and political economies of water use
over a long period, through various theoretical
perspectives. Amongst the most significant of
these perspectives areenvironmental his-
toriesof the politics of watergovernance
in situations of water scarcity and conflicting
demand, such as in California (see Gottlieb
and Fitzsimmons, 1991), and the constitutive
role of water in thepolitical ecologyof world
cities such as New York (Gandy, 2002). sw
welfare geography An approach to geog-
raphy where the emphasis is on spatial
inequalityandterritorial justice. Bound
up with the rise ofradical geographyin the
early 1970s, welfare geography stresses the
need to identify and explain the existence of
crime, hunger,povertyand other forms of
discrimination and disadvantage. Originally
conceived by David Smith (1977), welfare
geography basically sought to reveal who gets
what, where and how. This early work was
largely descriptive, and developed the abstract
formulation used in welfare economics,
grounding it empirically but maintaining the
use of algebraic representations. It provided a
basis for evaluation. Current welfare configur-
ations, in terms of who gets what, where and
how, could be judged against alternatives.
This preoccupation with description eventu-
ally was matched, and then superseded, by
work on the processes through which inequal-
ity is produced.marxist economicsreplaced
neo-classical economics as the basis for
explanatory analysis, which takes place at two
different levels. The first involves understand-
ing how the whole economic–political–social
system functions, and teasing out generic
tendencies (seemode of production). In the
case ofcapitalism, for example, this level of
analysis reveals that inequality is endemic.
uneven developmentis the spatial imprint,
the geographical result of the restlessness of
capitalism as a system. The second level
of explanation attends to the details of parti-
cular economic–social–political systems; for
example, how housing policy under capitalism
advantages some people in some places and
disadvantages other people in other places.
The analysis of the politics behind these pol-
icies has recently been reinvigorated (Staeheli
and Brown, 2003), as part of renewed interest
in the relationship betweensocial justiceand
thestate. Accompanying an attention to the
restructuring of thewelfare state, which
characterizes much of this recent work (Peck,
2001b), have been efforts to theorize a rela-
tionalethicsof care. Drawing onfeminist
theory, this work seeks to uncover the social
relations behind constructions of care and
of justice. Understanding politics as integral
in the everyday doing of care, the emphasis
is on the connections and relations rather
than the difference between categories, such
as private and public, state andmarket(Smith
and Lee, 2004). kwaSuggested reading
SmithandLee(2004);StaeheliandBrown(2003).welfare state A social system whereby the
state assumes primary, but not exclusive,
responsibility for the welfare of its citizens –
more specifically, those parts of the state
apparatus involved in the direct provision
or management of public services and bene-
fits. In principle, the welfare state exists
to address issues ofspatial inequalityand
territorial justice through income and
wealth redistribution policies. In areas ofGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_W Final Proof page 807 31.3.2009 4:10pmWELFARE STATE