Approaches to human geography: Philosophies, theories, people and practices (Second Edition) edited by Stuart C.Aitken and GillValentine, SAGE Publications, Los Angeles, London, 2015, 456 pp., cloth $156.95 (ISBN 978-1446276013) (original) (raw)

2015, The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien

The need for economic growth in a developing country has few if any economic springs. It arises from a desire to assume full human status by taking part in an industrial civilization, participation in which alone enables a nation or an individual to compel others to treat it as an equal. Chalmers Johnson, 1982: 25 [emphases mine] I have not seen a book on how to build a nation ... or how to make a living for its people. Lee Kuan Yew, 2000: 3 With apologies to Carl von Clausewitz, the economy is war by other means. To write about the economy is to write about the battleground for physical survival. But even among those fortunate enough to escape such draconian consequences, to write about the economy is to broach the battleground on which we seek to attain our desires and allay their distorted twin, anxiety. Chalmers Johnson (1982: 25) recognized these stakes as the driving force behind economic growth. As such, there is no place outside from which to write, for we are all inside this battleground. Yet, for those countries and populations aspiring to the promised land of economic growth and, thus, full human status, there are few useful guides on how to get there. Meanwhile, official guidelines from experts often appear to guide their protégés in the exact opposite direction. Fittingly, the epigraph above from Lee Kuan Yew (2000: 3), the former Prime Minister of Singapore, comes from his memoir From Third World to First, in which he writes of the complex and conflicting choices the government of a nation-state must make in getting to the promised land of first-rank status in the global hierarchy. The tensions between costs and rewards are high; as Johnson implies, to succeed is to assume full human status, whereas to fail is to confirm one's darkest fears of selfhood and to condemn one to secondary status in the human community. I began my professional life as a hydrologist working on water-related issues in development projects both abroad and in Canada. I was often intrigued by the choices made by the communities I worked with, which, when assessed from strictly physical and/or economic cost-benefit perspectives, did not seem advantageous. But the disadvantaged, as Ashis Nandy (1983: xiv) points out, make choices in the moral and cognitive venture in 31_Aitken and Valentine_Ch 31.indd 385