Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
HOW DOES GEOGRAPHY REFLECT AND
SHAPE POWER RELATIONSHIPS AMONG
GROUPS OF PEOPLE?
Power relationships are assumptions and structures
about who is in control and who has power over others.
Power relationships affect identities directly, and the
nature of those effects depends on the geographical con-
text in which they are situated. Power relationships also
affect cultural landscapes by determining what is seen
and what is not. Massey and Jess contend power is central
to the study of place: “the power to win the contest over
how the place should be seen, what meaning to give it; the
power, in other words, to construct the dominant imagina-
tive geography, the identities of place and culture.”
Power relationships do much more than shape the
cultural landscape. Power relationships can also subjugate
entire groups of people, enabling society to enforce ideas
about the ways people should behave or where people
should be welcomed or turned away—thus altering the
distribution of peoples. Policies created by governments
can limit the access of certain groups. Jim Crow laws in
the United States once separated “black” spaces from
“white” spaces, right down to public drinking fountains.
Even without government support, people create places
where they limit the access of other peoples . For example, in
Belfast, Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants
defi ned certain neighborhoods as excluding the “other”
through painting murals, hanging bunting, and painting
curbs (Fig. 5.12). In major cities in the United States, local
governments do not create or enforce laws defi ning cer-
tain spaces as belonging to members of a certain gang, but
the people themselves create spaces, much like the people
of Belfast do, through graffi ti, murals, and building colors.
Figure 5.12
Belfast, Northern Ireland. Signs of the confl ict in Northern
Ireland mark the cultural landscape throughout Belfast. In the
Ballymurphy area of Belfast, where Catholics are the majority
population, a woman and her children walk past a mural in sup-
port of the Irish Republican Army. The mural features images
of women who lost their lives in the confl ict, including Maureen
Meehan, who was shot by the British Army and Anne Parker,
who died when the bomb she planned to detonate exploded pre-
maturely.
Just Who Counts?
The statistics governments collect and report refl ect the
power relationships involved in defi ning what is valued and
what is not. Think back to the Constitution of the United
States prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, when the
government enumerated a black person as three-fi fths of
a white person. Until 1924, the U.S. government did not
recognize the right of all American Indians to vote even
though the Fifteenth Amendment recognized the right to
vote regardless of race in 1870. The U.S. government sepa-
rated American Indians into those who were “civilized”
enough to be citizens and those who were not (“Indians not
taxed”) until 1924, when it recognized the citizenship of all
American Indians born in the United States. Not until 1920
did enough states ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, which recognized the right of all Americans
to vote regardless of sex. Despite progress in counting
© AP/Wide World Photos.
people of all races, ethnicities, and sex, some charge that
the United States Census Bureau continues to undercount
minority populations (see Chapter 2).
Throughout the world, the work of women is often
undervalued and uncounted. When the United States
and other state governments began to count the value of
goods and services produced within state borders, they
did so with the assumption that the work of the house-
hold is reserved for women and that this work does not
contribute to the productivity of the state's economy.
The most commonly used statistic on productivity, the
gross national income (the monetary worth of what is
produced within a country plus income received from
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