Chapter 1: Introduction
Key concept: Space
1. The container in which things happen
2. Mentally constructed through cognitive processes e.g. mental maps
3. An understanding of space as produced through social interactions within
material space (Lefebvre)
Key concept: Power
3 aspects of power:
1. The ability to command or control the actions of others power over
2. The ability to control and deploy resources power to
3. Power within the operation of everyday techniques, strategies, and practices. This
aspect is drawn upon in work on the power of representation
Key concept: Place
A range of shifting meanings. ‘Place is a meaningful site that combines location, locale
and sense of place.
An important development in geographical understandings of place has been the move
away from seeing places as having clear boundaries towards seeing places as being
more open.
Chapter 2: Imagining the South
Introduction
The nature of the representation and who is doing the representation are both very
important.
Key concept: Representation
Systems of representation:
1. Involves principles of organization through which objects, people, etc. are
conceptualised and represented
2. Language. It does not refer purely to written or spoken words, but also to images,
signs, symbols, and noises for example
,Viewing the South from the North
4 types of Northern representation of the South:
1. Exotism and eroticism
2. Peoples of the South as ‘noble savages’
3. The south as a place of poverty in need of help
4. The South as a dangerous place that threatens the North
The income they make from selling their clothes they’re using to support a circular
textile chain.
Key concept: Discourse
Discourse is not just what is said or written, but the wider framing of wat is meaningful
and how particular topics should be approached. Not everyone or all groups will have
the same agency
Key concept: Postcolonialism
Power in the construction of definitions and understandings of peoples and places
affected by colonialism and its aftermath
Key concept: Eurocentrism
The belief that the European experience is the norm against which non-European
experiences are evaluated
Exotism and Eroticism
The West’s understanding of itself are partly created through comparison with the orient
and orientalism is a sign of European-Atlantic power over the orient.
Common tropes were used to describe what Europeans perceived as societies lacking
civilisation, particularly due to types of clothing, housing, and the absence of Christian
beliefs.
Indigenous populations also viewed this encounter as a meeting of different peoples,
but few of their accounts have survived.
Case study 2.1: Accounts of European Exploration
Such details focus on stressing the exotic and different nature of these practices
compared with European expectations of the time.
, First nations and noble savages
Presenting lands that were ‘discovered’ or ‘conquered’ as female and virgin. Focus on
unchanging way of life. Noble savages possessing traits of simplicity, honesty and above
all, closeness to nature that they themselves had lost.
Deliberate genocide was practiced in parts of North America and Australia.
Poverty and Pathos (=suffering)
Flows of aid both reflect and reinforce economic inequalities.
Active donors, passive recipients.
Key concept: Aid
The transfer of resources to promote improvements in economic development and
social welfare.
Barbarism and threats
‘Globalised fear’
‘World risk society’
3 different ways the South has allegedly presented a threat to the North
1. Overpopulation ecological or environmental threat Malthusian theory
2. Political instability, and war and terrorism Possibility/threat of mass Southern
immigration that might engulf Northern countries.
3. Spread of health risk and disease
Key concept: Neo-Malthusian
Presents current global population growth as leading to a resource crisis in simplistic,
but all to convincing way: humans consume precious resources of a finite world, global
population is increasing, therefore something must be done to tackle the Global South’s
‘population problem’
Key concept: Space
1. The container in which things happen
2. Mentally constructed through cognitive processes e.g. mental maps
3. An understanding of space as produced through social interactions within
material space (Lefebvre)
Key concept: Power
3 aspects of power:
1. The ability to command or control the actions of others power over
2. The ability to control and deploy resources power to
3. Power within the operation of everyday techniques, strategies, and practices. This
aspect is drawn upon in work on the power of representation
Key concept: Place
A range of shifting meanings. ‘Place is a meaningful site that combines location, locale
and sense of place.
An important development in geographical understandings of place has been the move
away from seeing places as having clear boundaries towards seeing places as being
more open.
Chapter 2: Imagining the South
Introduction
The nature of the representation and who is doing the representation are both very
important.
Key concept: Representation
Systems of representation:
1. Involves principles of organization through which objects, people, etc. are
conceptualised and represented
2. Language. It does not refer purely to written or spoken words, but also to images,
signs, symbols, and noises for example
,Viewing the South from the North
4 types of Northern representation of the South:
1. Exotism and eroticism
2. Peoples of the South as ‘noble savages’
3. The south as a place of poverty in need of help
4. The South as a dangerous place that threatens the North
The income they make from selling their clothes they’re using to support a circular
textile chain.
Key concept: Discourse
Discourse is not just what is said or written, but the wider framing of wat is meaningful
and how particular topics should be approached. Not everyone or all groups will have
the same agency
Key concept: Postcolonialism
Power in the construction of definitions and understandings of peoples and places
affected by colonialism and its aftermath
Key concept: Eurocentrism
The belief that the European experience is the norm against which non-European
experiences are evaluated
Exotism and Eroticism
The West’s understanding of itself are partly created through comparison with the orient
and orientalism is a sign of European-Atlantic power over the orient.
Common tropes were used to describe what Europeans perceived as societies lacking
civilisation, particularly due to types of clothing, housing, and the absence of Christian
beliefs.
Indigenous populations also viewed this encounter as a meeting of different peoples,
but few of their accounts have survived.
Case study 2.1: Accounts of European Exploration
Such details focus on stressing the exotic and different nature of these practices
compared with European expectations of the time.
, First nations and noble savages
Presenting lands that were ‘discovered’ or ‘conquered’ as female and virgin. Focus on
unchanging way of life. Noble savages possessing traits of simplicity, honesty and above
all, closeness to nature that they themselves had lost.
Deliberate genocide was practiced in parts of North America and Australia.
Poverty and Pathos (=suffering)
Flows of aid both reflect and reinforce economic inequalities.
Active donors, passive recipients.
Key concept: Aid
The transfer of resources to promote improvements in economic development and
social welfare.
Barbarism and threats
‘Globalised fear’
‘World risk society’
3 different ways the South has allegedly presented a threat to the North
1. Overpopulation ecological or environmental threat Malthusian theory
2. Political instability, and war and terrorism Possibility/threat of mass Southern
immigration that might engulf Northern countries.
3. Spread of health risk and disease
Key concept: Neo-Malthusian
Presents current global population growth as leading to a resource crisis in simplistic,
but all to convincing way: humans consume precious resources of a finite world, global
population is increasing, therefore something must be done to tackle the Global South’s
‘population problem’
