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Lecture + Seminar Notities GOI block 2
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The full notes of all lectures and seminars of the second block of the course geographies of inequality.
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Lecture Notities Block 2 GOILecture 9: Methodological issues II Measures and Maps of Inequality
1. Measures
Critique 1
● Poverty is defined arbitrarily
(and with ‘political interference’, see Hickel 2017)
Issues
● $1.90 (+/- €52 per month)>> Extreme poverty
● Note: there is a correction for Inflation and
inclusion of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)
Critique 2
● Poverty is more than income and consumption
Critique 3
● Poverty is not inequality
GINI
GINI is a relative measure>> equality remains constants with relative increases,
despite the wealthy receiving bigger additions
● Absolute GINI > GINI multiplied by mean
income/wealth.
Three concepts of global inequality (Milanovic)
1. Countries
2. Countries adjusted for population
3. Individuals
Geography has become more important (surprise!)
Geography matters
● Definitions matter
● Conception of poverty matters
● Relation to other groups matters (inequality)
2. Cartography
Cartopolitics (Van Houtum)
● Maps do not only reflect power but are power themselves.
● “Their production is ‘controlled, selected, organised, and redistributed’ by procedures
of exclusion that establish what is reasonable, true, acceptable to say –or depict- and
what is not (Foucault 1981, 52-53)” (Van Houtum & Bueno Lacy, 2020, 196).
The broader significance of Van Houtum & Bueno Lacy 2020
● Spaces of exception
● Mobility turn (relates to Timespace Geographies lecture)
● Dennis Arnold’s migration lecture
Modifiable Area Unit Problem
● Scale effect (zooming)
● Selection, or zoning, effect (differently defined aggregate units)
1
,Link to seminar on ‘scales of inequality’
Difference between observational scale (spatial resolution, size) and operational scale
(attribute of a social process).
“Operational and observational scale are distinct but related analytics(...) One cannot
posit a priori the correct observational scale for a given process; rather, one must ascertain
this empirically, bearing in mind that patterns may be artifacts of one’s observational scale.”
(S&V 2009)
“Scale cannot be understood as either ontological or epistemological: these are not mutually
exclusive, nor can they be collapsed into one another. Rather, scale has both ontological and
epistemological moments.” (Sayre & Vittorio 2009)
3. Why it matters
Knowing more about:
● Measures of poverty
● GINI
● Cartograms
● Cartopolitics
● MAUP
● Observational Scale versus Operational Scale
In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single
province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire
Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so
the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the
Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography,
2
, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not
without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts,
tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar;
in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography. Suárez Miranda,
Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658. ‘On Exactitude in Science’
by Jorge Luis Borges
Neil Gaiman
“The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map
possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.”
- In Fragile Things 2006
Maps, models and measures are representations or abstractions of reality
What is included and what is excluded?
Why does this matter?
Social reality is complex > there is no gold standard to know and understand inequality; you
need to know ‘context’:
● The extent of the data (population)
● Quality of the data
● The temporal and geographic scale of the data
● What measurements and indices like GINI ‘do’
● Observational Scale vs Operational Scale
● One measure or one map is never enough (triangulation)
● The dialectic between observation and operational scale
● Need to know to be a critical scholar... and a critical consumer citizen
A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory,
which accounts for its usefulness.— Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, p. 58.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful."- attributed to George Box (statistician)
Lecture 10: Housing, geography and Inequality
How are housing and inequality related, geographically?
Part 1: housing as a right
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of
himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary
social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability,
widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
- UN Declaration of Human Rights, article 25.1
Principle 15: The right to adequate housing
Everyone has the right to adequate housing, including protection from eviction, without
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity
-The Yogyakarta Principles on the application of
international human rights law in relation to sexual
orientation and gender identity (2007)
Right to housing:
● Not being homeless; right to shelter, access for all
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