Understanding Cultural Geography

Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces offers a comprehensive introduction to perhaps the most exciting and challenging area of human geography. By focusing on the notion of ‘place’ as a key means through which culture and identity is grounded, the book showcases the broad range of theories, methods and practices used within the discipline. This book not only introduces the reader to the rich and complex history of cultural geography, but also the key terms on which the discipline is built. From these insights, the book approaches place as an ‘ongoing composition of traces’, highlighting the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the world around us. The second edition has been fully revised and updated to incorporate recent literature and up-to-date case studies. It also adopts a new seven section structure, and benefits from the addition of two new chapters: Place and Mobility, and Place and Language. Through its broad coverage of issues such as age, race, scale, nature, capitalism, and the body, the book provides valuable perspectives into the cultural relationships between people and place. Anderson gives critical insights into these important issues, helping us to understand and engage with the various places that make up our lives. Understanding Cultural Geography is an ideal text for students being introduced to the discipline through either undergraduate or postgraduate degree courses. The book outlines how the theoretical ideas, empirical foci and methodological techniques of cultural geography illuminate and make sense of the places we inhabit and contribute to. This is a timely update on a highly successful text that incorporates a vast foundation of knowledge; an invaluable book for lecturers and students.

Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces offers a comprehensive introduction to perhaps the most exciting and challenging area of human geography. By focusing on the notion of 'place' as a key means through which culture and identity is grounded, the book showcases the broad range of theories, methods and practices used within the discipline. This book not only introduces the reader to the rich and complex history of cultural geography, but also the key terms on which the discipline is built. From these insights, the book approaches place as an 'ongoing composition of traces', highl.

This new and comprehensive book offers a holistic introduction to cultural geography. It integrates the broad range of theories and practices of the discipline by arguing that the essential focus of cultural geography is place. The book builds an accessible and engaging configuration of this important concept through arguing that place should be understood as an ongoing composition of traces. The book presents specific chapters outlining the history of cultural geography, before and beyond representation, as well as the methods and techniques of doing cultural geography. It investigates the places and traces of corporate capitalism, nationalism, ethnicity, youth culture and the place of the body. Throughout these chapters case study examples will be used to illustrate how these places are taken and made by particular cultures, examples include the Freedom Tower in New York City, the Berlin Wall, the Gaza Strip, Banksy graffiti, and anti-capitalist protest movements. The book discusses the role of power in cultural place-making, as well as the ethical dimensions of doing cultural geography. Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces offers a broad-based overview of cultural geography, ideal for students being introduced to the discipline through either undergraduate or postgraduate degree courses. The book outlines how the theoretical ideas, empirical foci and methodological techniques of cultural geography illuminate and make sense of the places we inhabit and contribute to. This is a timely synthesis that aims to incorporate a vast knowledge foundation and by doing so it will also prove invaluable for lecturers and academics alike.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Cultural geography is a major, vibrant subdiscipline of human geography. Cultural geographers have done some of the most important, exciting and thought-provokingly zesty work in human geography over the last half-century. This book exists to provide an introduction to the remarkably diverse, controversial, and sometimes-infuriating work of cultural geographers. The book outlines how cultural geography in its various forms provides a rich body of research about cultural practices and politics in diverse contexts. Cultural geography offers a major resource for exploring the importance of cultural materials, media, texts and representations in particular contexts and is one of the most theoretically adventurous subdisciplines within human geography, engaging with many important lines of social and cultural theory. The book has been designed to provide an accessible, wide-ranging and thought-provoking introduction for students studying cultural geography, or specific topics within this subdiscipline. Through a wide range of case studies and learning activities, it provides an engaging introduction to cultural geography.

"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 compelling book offers a fresh perspective on how the natural world has been imagined, built on, and transformed by human beings throughout history and around the globe. Coverage ranges from the earliest societies to preindustrial China and India, from the emergence in Europe of the modern world to the contemporary global economy. The focus is on what the places we have created say about us: our belief systems and the ways we make a living. Also explored are the social and environmental consequences of human activities, and how conflicts over the meaning of progress are reflected in today's urban, rural, and suburban landscapes. Written in a highly engaging style, this ideal undergraduate-level human geography text is illustrated with over 25 maps and 70 photographs. Note: Many additional photographs related to the themes addressed in the book are available at the author's website (www.greatmirror.com.)

This new dictionary provides over 2,000 clear and concise entries on human geography, covering basic terms and concepts as well as biographies, organisations, and major periods and schools. Authoritative and accessible, this is a must-have for every student of human geography, as well as for professionals and interested members of the public.