Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 29.6
The distribution
of multiple deprivation in
Glasgow, 1991.
Source:
Pacione1995b.
contexts. Study of the difficulties experienced by
these localities, which, although remaining
meaningful places to their inhabitants, are not
considered profitable spaces by capital, affords
valuable insight into the nature and incidence of
poverty and deprivation in contemporary society
and informs a critique of state policy.
Critics of geographical analyses of socio-
spatial variations in poverty, however, have sought
to dismiss area-based research on the grounds
that it does not offer an explanation of the
underlying causes of revealed patterns. This
viewpoint reflects the radical critique of the
empirical-statistical analyses that dominated
applied human geography throughout the 1970s.
Such critics are now pushing at an open door.
The claim that uncritical spatial analysis lends
itself to preservation of the injustice present in
the
status quo
has been widely accepted by
applied human geographers and has informed
subsequent policy-oriented analyses of poverty
and deprivation in which the identification of
pattern is used to advance a critique of current
policy aimed at alleviating multiple deprivation
(Pacione 1990b; 1992).
Proponents of geographical analyses maintain
that an area-based perspective can be justified on
several grounds. Some, such as Donnison (1974),
have argued for a degree of 'area effect' in
accentuating if not actually causing deprivation.
Plate 29.2
A modem equivalent of 'bread and
circuses'? The proliferation of satellite television in a
deprived council estate in Glasgow
(photograph: the
author)
.
challenge for contemporary urban planners and
policy makers.
THE VALUE OF AN APPLIED
GEOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE
While the principal underlying causes of local
concentrations of poverty and deprivation are
structural, stemming from the effects of global
economic restructuring and state social and
economic policy, the impacts of these processes are
felt by people living within particular local
