Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
common levels of equity to all of a country's people, and from the point of view
of individual governments, to stem the possible rise of regionalist unrest which
may otherwise grow into local nationalism and the move for separation from the
mother state.
At certain points in the discussion it will be necessary, however, to look at a
broader scale, that of whole nations. At this level, there are patterns, as for
example in the case of East Asia, where a common thread of development
processes seems to affect a whole set of countries following in the lead of Japan,
and there is a perceptible spatial diffusion outwards from the Japanese core. Yet
other kinds of regions, some no larger than the intra-national regions that are the
usual object of study, can also be observed, as national boundaries are traversed
in the development of some border regions, such as that between the USA and
Mexico. Other regional groupings are those of key centres like Singapore and
Hong Kong with industrial nodes at some distance from them, in mainland China
or Indonesia. All these are economic regions that have defied the boundaries of
the nation state, and in
Chapter 3
we consider whether they are becoming more
important than the regions within states.
The lost consensus on the development process
In the 1960s, it was seen as quite clear that economic development was a
desirable aim for all countries, and that it was to be achieved by a set of standard
measures, usually including a broad industrial plan to raise a country's level of
production, its exports, and the diversity of products. It was also accepted that in
the course of development, some regions of countries would lag behind, and that
this was undesirable. Intervention by the state to assist in overcoming the
differences that might build up was thought to be the best solution to this
problem. A process of development was seen to include changes from economic
activity concentrated in the primary sector (farming, fishing, forestry and
mining) to a dominance of secondary activity (manufacturing), and then, in the
later stages, to dominantly tertiary (services) or quaternary (research and
development) activity. A spatial process was also identified, development (or at
least technological change) starting in key cities and spreading out from them
down the urban hierarchy and into rural areas. This process could be called a
diffusion of development.
This diagnosis is no longer acceptable to many. On the one hand, the concept
of economic development has itself broadened out to include people's social and
environmental aims; different goals for different regions or countries are
recognized; and the role of the state or of planners is questioned. On top of this
the diffusionist model is doubted, and the accepted role of geographers in
preparing the spatial diffusion models is undermined by the failure of these
models in real life. It might be thought that these new uncertainties of the 1990s
make it too dangerous or irrelevant to write about development from the
geographer's point of view. But this topic is intended to show that there are
