Aspects of Historical GeographyAuthor(s): R. M. SmithSource: Area, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1975), pp. 62-63Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20000944 .

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62 Reports of symposia

Income disparities and development Organizer: Dr A. Gilbert (UCL) on behalf of the Developing Areas Study Group Chairman: Prof. A. Young (East Anglia); Dr J. Dickenson (Liverpool); Dr A. Gilbert Contributors: C. J. Dixon (City of London Polytechnic) Rural income disparities and instability in

North-east Thailand P. P. Karan and W. A. Bladen (Kentucky) Interregional disparities of income in India A. Gilbert and D. Goodman (UCL) Regional income disparities and economic

development: a critique of current opinions. B. W. Beeley (Aberdeen) Investment and the spatial pattern of development in Turkey J. Naylon (Keele) Regional income disparities and development policies in Spain

A. S. Morris (Glasgow) Regional disparities and policy in modern Argentina

As economists, who have long dominated the development planning field, show a growing interest in regional aspects of the development process, it was appropriate that several papers should examine the theoretical approaches to this theme by Myrdal,

Hirschman, Kuznets, Friedmann and particularly Williamson's concept of income divergence and convergence. The majority view was that a tendency towards regional equalization was 'not proven'. A significant gap between declared intentions and actual achievements in government regional policies was also noted.

C. J. Dixon examined the relationship between economic backwardness and political unrest, and attempts at remedial action, in north-east Thailand. P. P. Karan and W. A. Bladen argued that in the Indian case available evidence does not support the view that relative poverty and regional inequality increase during the early phases of growth.

Regrettably this paper was read in the absence of the authors, so that it was impossible to pursue the queries and comments raised by it. A substantial paper by A. Gilbert and D. Goodman examined Williamson's assumptions and the theories of regional convergence and divergence and, in a case study of North East Brazil, suggested that even in the favourable context of the Brazilian 'economic miracle' doubt remains as to the inevitability of income convergence. In two papers concerned with the fringes of the developing world B. W. Beeley pointed to the dynamic significance of external relationships, indicating Turkey's changing regional priorities in an imperial, republican and, potentially, EEC context, while J. Naylon suggested that Spanish 'regional' policies had done little to improve the lot of the poorer areas. A similar pattern for Argentina was indicated by A. S. Morris, with government development policy tending to further existing patterns of concentration.

A measure of the symposium's success is that it produced more problems than solutions. Some were of longstanding-the deficiencies and short runs of available data on developing areas, and the problems deriving from scale variations of adminis trative units used in analysis. Others were newer-the suggestion that even if inter regional equality could be attained, intra regional disparities remain, implying a need for more concern with vertical (social) income contributions rather than horizontal (spatial) ones. A need to take account of differing political systems with varying approaches to development was also indicated.

J. P. Dickenson Liverpool

Aspects of historical geography

Organizer: Dr R. U. Cooke (UCL); Chairman: Dr A. R. H. Baker (Cambridge) Contributors: A. Brook (Keele) Spatial systems in American history A. Wilcock (Melbourne) The geographer-pre-1800 D. G. Browning (Oxford) The mapping of population data for colonial Latin America

in the Joint Oxford-Syracuse Project (JOSP)

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Reports of symposia 63

D. J. Robinson (Syracuse) The analysis of eighteenth century Spanish Amnerican cities in the Joint Oxford-Syracuse Project (JOSP): some problems and alternative solutions

A. Brook began with a grandiose evaluation of the spatial development of American history. He identified three consecutive spatial systems in American development, each representing a specific integration of space, society and technology: a ' spatially restricted ' society before 1825; ' spatial extroversion ' from 1825 to 1914; and ' spatial introversion' after 1914. The paper provoked considerable discussion on a variety of points. In the colonial era considerable friction existed between the older settled areas and the frontier communities from New England to the Carolinas, whilst points were made suggesting that the model was too Euro-centric and would have benefited from an analysis of changing attitudes to space, rather than seeing space as techno logically determined. Prof. A. A. Wilcock presented an erudite and rather amusing assessment of our knowledge of the earliest geographers. He was preoccupied with two problems; first, the establishment of a date when men of some social standing and scholarship could be described simply as 'geographers' and secondly, the confusion that exists in the printed works of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries where the terms cosmography and geography sometimes were used interchangeably, and other times denoted different areas of inquiry.

The current and future work of the Joint Oxford-Syracuse Project on Latin American population and geography was the subject of two well presented papers by D. Browning and D. J. Robinson. D. Browning detailed the computerization of the late eighteenth qfntury census data of the Spanish empire. In the hope that researchers with various interests will be able to use the data, it is being stored on tape in a form as close to the original as possible, and is being mapped principally by SYMAP at the parish level; information collected at the sub-parish level, i.e. the hamlet, the estate, the mine, and so on is also being analysed. D. J. Robinson spoke on the use of the census material for a study of late eighteenth century Latin American cities considering methods of

mapping the data and discussing certain urban ecological characteristics, noting the absence of any clearly defined concentric zoned or sectoral patterns. In the discussion afterwards questions were put ranging from the nature of the project's sampling pro cedures to the possible European precedents for the Spanish census. Prof. Robinson considered that one of the most interesting products of the research will be the analysis of the spatial interaction patterns of kin and domestic groups-a mode of inquiry that urban social historians and geographers have so far been unable, or disinclined, to undertake.

R. M. Smith University of Cambridge

Problems and potentials in social survey research Organizer: D. J. Unwin (Leicester) on behalf of the Study Group in Quantitative

Methods Chairman: Dr P. J. Taylor (Newcastle) Contributors: C. Payne (Nuffield, Oxford) Statistical problems in the analysis of social survey data N. Wrigley (Southampton) The analysis of categorized survey data by regression

methods N. Perry (SSRC) The use of external resources in academic survey research Bridget Leach (SSRC) and C. Dixon (City of London Polytechnic) Survey research

in underdeveloped countries

Clive Payne began the discussion by summarizing the problems of sampling and non sampling error, missing data, validity, consistency and so on. He pointed out that most

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