The Makers Of Modern Geography Rle Social Cultural Geography

This book examines the works of the outstanding makers of modern geography and demonstrates the consistency of idea and purpose in their work. Geography as an explicitly defined field of knowledge is more than two thousand years old, but as a university subject, geography is only 150 years old, and in this period it has developed hugely. This study traces the development of modern geography as an organized body of knowledge, in the light of the works of its foremost German and French contributors.

The chapters in this book address fundamental questions of the nature and purpose of geography, scrutinising its contents, philosophy and methodology. Aimed at undergraduates its purpose is to broaden the debate about what geography had become during the 1980s and what shape it might take in the future.

This book highlights the increasingly important contribution of geographical theory to the understanding of social change, values, economic & political organization and ethical imperatives. As a cohesive collection of chapters from well-known geographers in Britain and North America, it reflects the aims of the contributors in striving to bridge the gap between the historical-materialist and humanist interpretations of human geography. The book deals with both the contemporary issues outlined above and the situation in which they emerge: industrial restructuring, planning, women’s issues, social and cultural practices and the landscape as context for social action.

This book urges the case for reinstating regional geography as a contemporary and relevant methodology. Much interest was shown in the 1980s in reviving, yet restructuring, the field of regional geography. The essays in this book both review that work and propose a way forward. The essays divide into three sections. The first assesses traditional regional geography and its relevance to the study of contemporary situations; the second, the alternative approaches of world-systems analysis, diffusion and structuration theory. The book concludes by considering the potential of regional geography to interpret the structures within which society operates and its claim to remain at the core of the discipline.

This book is an introduction to the nature of geography. There are detailed sections on content, methods and purposes and an attempt is made to distinguish progress from those changes which are merely fashion and those which result in genuine progress. One of these, resulting partly from the adoption of quantitative techniques, is the improvement in the accuracy and the type of explanation which the geographer is now able to give. The new techniques have also helped in the bringing about of profound changes in geographical laws, the use of models and even the relevance of determinism.

"The editors of this genuinely brilliant book seem to dare the reader to argue with them from the first page... I would encourage everyone interested in cultural geography, or in the cultural turn within a whole set of human geogrphies, to do likewise." --ANNALS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS "A richly plural and impassioned re-presentation of cultural geography that eschews everything in the way of boundary drawing and fixity. A re-visioning of the field as "a set of engagements with the world," it contains a vibrant atlas of ever shifting possibilities. Throbbing with commitment, and un-disciplined in the most positive sense of that term, it is exactly what a handbook ought to be." --Professor Allan Pred Department of Geography, University of California at Berkeley Ten sections, with a detailed editorial introduction, the Handbook of Cultural Geography presents a comprehensive statement of the relation between the cultural imagination and the geographical imagination. Emphasising the intellectual diversity of the discipline, the Handbook is a textured overview that presents a state-of-the-art assessment of the key questions informing cultural geography, while also looking at resonances between cultural geography and other disciplines.

This book illuminates the profound influence of geography on everyday life. Concentrating on the realm of social reproduction – gender, family, education, culture and tradition, race, ethnicity the contributors provide both an articulation of a theory of territory and reproduction and concrete empirical analyses of the evolution of social practices in particular places. At the core of the book’s contribution is the concept of society as a ‘time-space’ fabric, upon which are engraved the processes of political, economic and socio-cultural life. A second distinctive feature of the book is its substantive focus on the relation between territory and social practice. Thirdly, it represents a significant step in the redefinition of the research agenda in human geography.

This book, considers the major philosophical and methodological trends within each 'school, ' the balance between the various sub-disciplines, the role of leading individuals, influences upon the development of the subject, and its impact in education and elsewhere