Cultural Geography: Possible Classes and Books

Gender:

Putting Women In Place (Great overview of connection between gender and place; well-written and accessible and great intro for undergrads)

Race/Ethnicity:

Sidewalk

Environment:

Changes in the Land

"The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492" - Denevan

Suburbia:

Building Suburbia

Behind the Gates

Suburban Nation

Urbanism:

Sidewalk

Gay New York

Private vs. Public Space:

Brave New Neighborhoods

Behind the Gates

City of Quartz

Sidewalk

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

Gay New York

Labor and Capitalism:

The Lie of the Land

Mobility/Transgression:

In Place/Out of Place

Putting Women In Place

Country of Exiles (as example of conservative view of those who hate free-flowing movement and its implications of "placelessness;" is this a valid point? Does free flow and cosmopolitanism destroy "real place?")

Sidewalk

Memory:

Shadowed Ground

The Past is a Foreign Country (on this list?)

Regionalism:

All Over the Map

The Middle West

Lure of the Local

Class:

Sidewalk

Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience

Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (2002 [1977])
By Yi-Fu Tuan

Synopsis: This book takes a humanistic approach to space and place, noting that "how the human person, who is animal, fantasist, and computer combined, experiences and understands the world is the central theme of this book" (5). It contains chapters dealing with the experiential perspective, body and spatial relations, the child and space/place, crowding and spaciousness, mythical space and place, architectural space and awareness, spatial ability, time, intimate experiences of place, attachments to homeland, and visibility. [As usual, his style is very poetic and flowy, and though it does contain many great stand-alone lines, I always feel like there isn't anything to do with his work.] His main argument seems to be: "Place is security; space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other" (3). This book is very focused on the ways humans experience space/place - both how they negotiate their way in it and how they infuse it with meaning - though of course cultural influences are ever-present and infuse all negotiations with space/place. Tuan is concerned with the mystical and meaning-infused elements of place - i.e. the sacred meaning of certain directions (or lack of meaning - as in modern U.S.). My favorite part here is the use of symbolism to give people of a nation-state a sense of meaningful coherence. "Place is an organized world of meaning" (179). There is an overall mystical sense to his writing.

Interacts With:

This book supposedly helped establish the field of human geography.
Still not sure how this explicitly connects to everything, though it apparently does. Obviously connects to the anthologies in praise of him.

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (1994)
By George Chauncey

Synopsis: This book seeks to challenge the idea that a vibrant gay culture did not exist prior to WWII by refuting three myths: 1) the myth of isolation, 2) the myth of invisibility, 3) the myth of internalization. Chuancey does an amazingly thorough social history which reconstructs the gay subculture of 1890-1940 New York City by drawing from vice society records, police records, newspapers, and all variety of media in order to provide a rich ethnographic description of gay life. The book is divided into three parts: I: Male (Homo) Sexual Practices and Identities in the Early Twentieth Century; II: The Making of the Gay Male World; III: The Politics of Gay Culture. Chauncey provides both a portrait and analysis of the geography and symbolism of the gay male world in order to show that it was more restricted/hidden in the second third of the century. Basically, the hetero/homo binary and way of defining personhood as based on sexual object preference did not really happen until the 1930s-50s, when it replaced the then-dominant system of "fairie" vs. "normal men" which used gender behavior/identification as the main categorizer (fairies were effeminate, queers were not but liked men, "trade" were masculine and "normal" but would fuck men if approached). This shows a much more fluid range of sexual activity that was allowed to "normal"men then versus now. The book also maps the "sexual topography of the gay world," and shows the way gay culture flourished within urban spaces like streets, parks, bathhouses, boarding houses, and nightclubs. Urban space was thus essential to the development of this culture. Argues that the thriving of this culture was an act of resistance, and that gay and straight culture were defined dialectically. Gays especially flourished among the working class and ethnic/immigrant communities. Seems to show that a sort of utopia emerged during prohibition in which all classes/sexualities were thrown together in search of booze/revelry, and that the repeal of prohibition ultimately led to a rise in anti-gay policing. "Privacy could only be had in public" (198).

Interacts With:

All books that deal with public life/public space:
Sidewalk, Rudeness and Civility, Urban Masses and Moral Order, Land of Desire, Confidence Man and Painted Women, Horrible Prettiness (urban life and the particularities of urban spaces like the theatre),
Maybe de Certeau (transgressive power of small everyday acts, use of space),
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (not on lists, but connects on urban space and sex culture, and both have a sort of utopian bent to them), Cities on a Hill,
Could maybe contrast with books that focus more on private life, like Behind the Gates, Building Suburbia, The Levittowners, Middletown, Country of Exiles, etc
For books that focus on a different, mobility-based form of public life/space:
Learning from Las Vegas, Neon Metropolis,
Flourishing of gay culture as act of resistance (there's the pop culture list tie-ine!!)
Connects with Foucault, for idea that middle class tries to control sexuality by naming it and defining it.

**Still one of the best!** Tons of good info - See full notes for more details.

Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (2000)
By Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck

Synopsis: This book is basically the mission statement for New Urbanism, and is "a primer on how design can help us untangle the mess we have made and once again build and inhabit places worth caring about" (xiv). It's also a "study of two different models of urban growth: the traditional neighborhood and suburban sprawl" (3). This book is a plan for how to create good human environments, and provides an overview of the various problems of sprawl - how they were created by federal funding, how they are maintained, what sprawl looks like, and why it is bad. All of this is intermixed with elements of traditional neighborhood development in order to show a solution to the problem. The tone is definitely defensive, yet they do a good job of defending New Urbanism against critics who mock the "traditional" design. The authors basically say hey, that's what people want, and we have bigger concerns to be thinking about. Authors state that sprawl consists of 1) housing subdivisions, 2) shopping centers, 3) office parks, 4) civic institutions, 5) roadways. The problem is that sprawl separates and isolates all our vital functions, thus this book is an attempt to bring back a sense of holism. We have become fragmented and can combat this via design. The authors propose six rules of Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND): 1) 5-minute walk from edge to cente, 2) a center, 3) good street networks, 4) narrow, versatile streets, 5) mixed-use, 6) special sites for special buildings. The problem is that traditional suburbia lacks choice. We shouldn't let mistaken impulses/design of Modernist architectural solutions prevent us today from designing places to better help society. They say: "experiment on the rich, who can always move out" (53).

Interacts With:

Building Suburbia, Edge City (and Garreau claims edge cities are a way of re-integrating functions, but I'm not totally convinced), The Modern Urban Landscape
Hmm, this could be seen as yet another antidote to the fragmentation/alienation of modernity, as authors claim New Urbanism will bring a sense of re-unification and holism.

Place: A Short Introduction

Place: A Short Introduction (2004)
By Tim Cresswell

Synopsis: The goal of this book is "to scrutinize the concept of place and its centrality to both geography and everyday life," (1) and does this by showing place as a process more than as a static thing. The book then delves into an overview of the major conceptualizations of place, especially as seen through the lens of geography: 1) Defining Place (three human geography concepts: space, place, and landscape - landscape as a way of looking and being outside, while place is a way of being, and being inside; "place" as a concept wasn't big until the 1970s with the rise of humanistic geography founded on phenomenology); 2) The Geneology of Place (place as both object and process; Carl Sauer and the way mid-century geographers focus on "culture areas" and the way groups impact natural habitats; place as in flux and in motion, and some are bothered by that; three ways place is approached: descriptive, social constructionist [how do underlying power forces influence it], and phenomenological [place as connected to ways of being human; the most humanistic geography approach]); 3) Reading 'A Global Sense of Place' (idea that globalization bothered people's sense that place should be about rootedness and authenticity; Doreen Massey argues instead for new conceptualization of place in which it is open and hybrid and flowing - place as process); 4) Working With Place (what to focus on when doing place - such as memory, place identity, what's considered in/out of place). This book is more a synthesis of others' work as opposed to an argument-driven work, but he seems to be arguing for the primacy of "place as process." Says political geographer John Agnew defines place as a meaningful location via 1) location (fixed objective coordinates), 2) locale ("material setting for social relations"), and 3) sense of place ("subjective emotional attachment people have to place") (7). "Place, at a basic level, is space invested with meaning in the context of power" (12).

Interacts With:

All books obsessed with the importance of place/geography:
American Empire (Neil Smith),
Place as a process/a fluid thing, and not as a static entity. This idea connects to regionalism too:
The Middle West (James Shortridge - our concept/mapping of the midwest changes over time to meet present needs, and we keep shifting our definitional location of the midwest to the most rural parts; this shows that we have some kind of need as Americans to have a "heartland" that is rural and agricultural, even if this is no longer the dominant reality of the midwest).
Even books about presentist uses of the past, such as Shadowed Ground
This idea of the fluctuation and fluidity is central to all of the lists; the one thing that's constant in history in change - and we should embrace this. Change is what allows forces and entities to remain alive, relevant, and meaningful.
Doreen Massey with her idea that place is a process [what exactly does that mean though? Just that the realities and identities of place are always in motion?] David Harvey also sees place as a process.
Apparently this book has a great reference/resource section as the final chapter as well.
**This book is really useful - buy!!** Has lots of good definitions.
Idea that we can't exist without place, we need to construct it in order to be human (33).

American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization

American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (2003)
By Neil Smith

Synopsis: Smith's book is an attempt to demonstrate how historical change and geographical knowledge are linked by focusing on the "American Century" as beginning in 1898 "where the government, corporate institutions, and ruling class sought a twentieth-century globalism best conceived as an American Empire" (xvii). The goal of the book is to challenge the belief that the "American Century" was/is beyond geography, and does this by following the development of U.S. globalism through the twentieth century. This book is massive and dense and divided into five parts: I: From Exploration to Enterprise: Geography on the Cusp of Empire; II: The Rise of Foreign Policy Liberalism: The Great War and the New World; III: The Empire at Homes: Science and Politics; IV: The American Lebensraum; V. The Bitter End. The basic argument is "power always expresses spatiality" (xix), and we are thus not "beyond geography." Henry Luce had exclaimed in 1941 that geography was dead. The book also argues that there have been three formative moments in America's rise to globalism: 1) 1898 and the colonial wars (kind of up to WWI); 2) WWII; 3) 1989-1999 - "Capitalist revolution" or "globalization." U.S. expansion/imperialism too an increasinly market-based form as opposed to territorial/straight-up colonial form. The book spends a lot of time on Isaiah Bowman - a geographer, university president, and presidential advisor who impacted geographical policy in the U.S. Geopolitics emerges as a modern mix of power via political control of territory. It's now all about international connections of power and the market.

Interacts With:

Foreign policy,
Hmm, there seems to be a common sort of "insecurity" among geographers, that they often feel the need to defend themselves and prove that they are still relevant. This makes sense - especially with the recent decline in geography programs - but sometimes it can come off as a little tedious. I mean, ok, yes, geography and place are important - do we really need to keep arguing that place is important? Let's just justify this by talking about it/working on this instead of constantly pointing this out. Just do it!
This book is tricky and I don't have much to say about it.

Sidewalk

Sidewalk (1999)
By Mitchell Duneier

Synopsis: This book is an examination of the "invisible social structure of the sidewalk," which asks how the various street vendors, etc "live in a moral order" in "the face of exclusions and stigmatization on the basis of race and class," and wonders how "their acts intersect with a city's mechanisms to regulate its public spaces" (9). Book is based-on first-person ethnographic research conducted from 1996-97 (and a bit from 1998-99), which included participant observation on the sidewalks of certain Greenwich Village streets, following the street economy of many unhoused or marginally-housed Black street vendors who sell recycled magazines and books fished from the trash. Hakin Hasan was the main street vendor Duneier focused on. The book is divided into five sections: Part One: The Informal Life of the Sidewalk, Part Two: New uses of the Sidewalks, Part Three: The Limits of Informal Social Control; Part Four: Regulating the People Who Work the Streets, Part Five: The Construction of Decency. This book draws largely from Jane Jacobs and her discussion of the importance of "public characters." It also argues that sidewalk space allows struggling people "to engage in legal entrepreneurial activity that helps them maintain respect for others and for themselves" (179). Refers to Zimbardo's "broken windows" study and says that physical disorder shouldn't necessarily be equated with social disorder. What is the social disorder equivalent of a broken window, and how do we know when people are really broken rather than actually on their way up? Just because people are forced to do everything in public (i.e. "use the bathroom"), doesn't mean people are actually less decent than those who don't have to.

Interacts With:

Jane Jacobs, Edge City (could a community like this ever thrive in an Edge City? Don't think so. Couldn't really "thrive" in any non-walking city)
I guess a criticism of this book is that the author may have gotten too close to his subjects - i.e. was not "tough" enough on them. In that way, this book can be a good example of methodological questions, though personally I think the author was fair enough. It's true he didn't really adequately deal with gender issues, but I think that's a minor point.
Seems to say that capitalism is a noble effort. See, at least these guys were trying to act like respectable capitalists.

Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy

Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy (1997)
By Kenneth E. Foote

Synopsis: This book investigates the ways Americans deal with violent/tragic events, and the way they choose to remember or forget them. The book quotes Lowenthal in saying "memory not only conserves the past but adjusts recall to current needs" (5). Asks: How do Americans view and interpret the past? In order to get to this, the author examines site of such turmoils as war, mass murders, political assassinations, violent labor and race riots, transportation accidents, fires, floods, and explosions. The book argues that there are four ways tragedies are dealt with: 1) sanctification ( events hold lasting positive meaning that people want to remember - i.e. heroism or great sacrifice - often marked by a memorial or monument, a "sacred place"); (2) designation (sites marked bu not sanctified, may lack "heroic" qualities; a kind of limbo/transitional position; Lorraine Motel - MLK site, later sanctified); 3) rectification ("the process through which a tragedy site is put right and used again;" is what happens to most sites of violence - i.e. murders, plane crashes); 4) obliteration (actively effacing all evidence to cover up or remove from view due to high sense of shame). Basically demonstrates that there is a continuous struggle over meaning and over ways of remembering; some mark ways for communities to come together and heal, some are ways of remembering change and changing needs of the time. What we choose not to remember or mark is just as important as what we do.

Interacts With:

Lowenthal,
Any works that deal with the contested nature of landscape, and/or that show present concerns can influence the way the past is dealt with.

Edge City: Life on the New Frontier

Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (1991)
By Joel Garreau

Synopsis: In examining "the biggest change in a hundred years in how we build...cities" (xii), Garreau asks: What American values do Edge Cities embody, and are they places we will ever be proud of? Do Edge Cities really satisfy our longing for the good life? This is a journalistic account, and each chapter focuses on a different city or region, such as Detroit, Atlanta, Texas, Boston, Phoenix, and Southern California. He claims that while the phenomenon is new, they do embody timeless America values like individualism, mobility, and anti-urbanism. Edge Cities are places defined by tons of office and retail space - such as Bishop Ranch and Tyson's Corner, VA. He is undecided as to whether or not edge cities are "real cities," but does note that cities are always shaped by the "cutting edge" transportation of the time, and ECs are clearly shaped by the car. He also notes that cities are always a monument to the worship of something, and that ECs represent a reintegration of home, work, market, etc.

Interacts With:

In saying that ECs represent reintegration, could this then be seen as a counter-modernist plan? But it seems like such cities do not bring things together, they separate and categorize into different pockets of use. Could connect with lots of the pieces on this list, especially those that bemoan a loss of place:
Country of Exiles, Death and Life of Great American Cities, Variation on a Theme Park, J.B. Jackson (which a focus on understanding what's there as opposed to necessarily castigating it)

"Once-Upon-A-Time in the Commodity World: An Unofficial Guide to Mall of America"

"Once-Upon-A-Time in the Commodity World: An Unofficial Guide to Mall of America" (March 1999)
By Jon Goss (from Annals)

Synopsis: Argues that the Mall of America "narrates out collective loss of a natural world of innocence and immanence, and promises restoration in a utopian community of consumption" (45). In fact a sense of loss and longing seems to subconsciously drive a lot of the fantasies found there. Goss spent ten days doing "semiotic reading and participant observation" at the Mall of America, mostly reading the mall as a text. Consumption depends on a faith that the objects possess some kind of power which will then be transfered to the purchaser - i.e. sexual desirability, prestige, status, etc - and this falls in line with the anthro concept of magic systems (56). He finds that the main tropes within the mall are: movement and mobility, memory and magic, nature, primitives, enchantment, and heritage. Says "the commodity is not a souvenir of the real experience of a past or distant reality, but a memento of the retail experience in which its possibility is imagined" (70). "The task is to recognize how the age-old fears of obsolescence - nature dies, children grow up, primitives are 'civilized,' and out heritage is lost - and dreams of immanence, live in the commodity aesthetic, not to eliminate them as so much 'false consciousness,' but to liberate them and live them more fully in really meaningful consumption" (72).

Interesting Specifics:

This article has a great bibliography.

This is one of my favorites - I love it!

Says the contemporary malls are what Foucault calls " 'heterotopias of compensation,' real and discrete 'counter-sites' where multiple images of ideal times and places combine to create an illusion of a world standing outside of everyday life" (45).

Shopping malls are examples of "hypernarrated spaces (Boyer, 1994), providing texts and contents for commemoration through which are narrated the loss and restoration of a thematic meaning" (47). It attempts to unite "individual biography with natural and cultural history" via the commodity (47). [This reminds me of the Buffalo Bill book on Janet's list - that BBWWS was combining personal and historical memory through the experience of the consumer spectacle].

Interacts With:

Jennifer Price (Flight Maps)
Walter Benjamin
Bakhtin's concept of the chronotype - "generic spaciotemporal structures where stories take place" (50)
In its view of objects as things imbided with meaning and embodying a sense of loss, this fits with most of the material culture books on Jeff's list, like The Meaning of Things, and On Longing, etc. Basically anything that looks at objects as having a special almost talisman-esque power that is passed on to its owner/possessor/giver.
This book does not engage with various debates over the artificiality of the mall or consumer culture, or with the hollow shallowness of consumer culture in general. Rather, it is asking us to look deeper into the meaning behind the objects and what kind of need they must represent.
Doesn't like the high culture critique of authentic vs. inauthentic experiences, and feel discussion of that (i.e. consumption as inauthentic) just reproduces the dichotomy what consumption revolves around (49).

"The Place of Landscape: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting the American Scene"

"The Place of Landscape: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting the American Scene" (Dec 1997)
By Richard Schein (from Annals)

Synopsis: Although there is much ongoing debate as to what a cultural landscape is, all definitions have two major points: 1) they look at cultural landscape as a material object, and 2) "all are cohered by a loosely defined set of commonly accepted key works" (661). Basically, "the cultural landscape is produced and is ultimately implicated in the ongoing reproduction of social and cultural life" (662). Cultural landscapes are "discourses materialized" (663), and are potentially liberating mediums for social change as they are constantly "implicated in the ongoing reconstitution of a discourse" (664). Uses the example of the Kentucky suburb of Ashland Park (designed by Olmsted) to show ways in which landscape architecture, insurance mapping zones (Sanborn maps), zoning, historic preservation, the neighborhood association, and consumption all work to create discourses which shaped and were shaped by Ashland Park. Thus, "the cultural landscape serves to naturalize or concretize - to make normal - social relations as embodied in the various discourses and their combinations" (676). Thus, "the human agent is both object and subject" (676). [Hmm - talk about dialecticalism!]. We should look at the material and symbolic , and the interplay of actors as objects and subjects.

Interesting Specifics:

Cultural landscapes contain many different meanings and have "nodes' at the intersection of various different knowledge networks.

This article is the one that includes the cool Sanborn map description.

Contains an interesting discussion of zoning too.

The Federal Register was established in 1966 along with the Historic Preservation Act of 1966.

The American landscape is a "paradox between ideals of liberal individualism and the cultural landscape's disciplinary capabilities" (676).

Interacts With:

Debate as to what cultural landscape is about, but seems to fall in line with neither "old" or "new" cultural geography.
Basically, support idea that we need to look at both symbolic and material.

"The America's before and after 1492;" and "The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492"

"The America's before and after 1492," By Karl Butzer (Sep. 1992); and "The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492," By William M. Denevan, (Sep. 1992)
Both from Annals


Butzer Synopsis: Both articles written to celebrate 500th anniversary of Columbus's encounter with the New World, and both are designed to dispel the myth that the New World was a pristine land when Columbus reached it. Native Americans of course did alter the environment and utilize many different methods of agriculture. Also, Euro diseases wiped out about 90% of Native population, paving the way for a totally new colonial landscape. However, there is not much evidence of European land damage prior to the 1700s, and says that Euros actually did have a history of agricultural conservation. Therefore, we should really be asking when and why Euros gave up their more conservationist techniques. Essentially, this article is a review of many works that ask us to question long-held assumptions about the condition of North American land before and after Euro contact.


Denevan Synopsis: Indians of course did alter the landscape, but "the landscape of 1750 was more 'pristine' (less humanized) than that of 1492" due to the demise of Indian populations from Euro diseases, etc (370). The hemisphere-wide Indian population was probably only 30% of what it was in 1492. Furthermore, most Euro descriptions of the land didn't occur until 1750-1850, at which time the environment had had a chance to "recover" and grow back - appearing "pristine." Environments are always in flux; change comes and goes and new environments are imposed upon "pristine" landscapes.


Interacts With: Cronon

"Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape"

"Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape" (Dec. 1996)
By Kenneth R. Olwig, (article in Annals)

Synopsis: Shows that the concept of "landscape" in geography is seen as both its most important contribution, andone of its more contested ones. He argues that the term can still be useful today, and is perhaps best understood as "a nexus of community, justice, nature, and environmental equity" (631). Spends a lot of time on the etymology of "landscape," especially as connected through the German Landschaft, and also traces its use in Old Europe. Main argument seems to be that even landscape as scenery is never devoid of cultural and historical meaning. Viewing landscape both reflects and shapes out views of the world. Argues that the American geography use of "landscape"is a mix of the British scenic idea and the "German romantic ideas concerning the relation of culture to nature as expressed in the physical landscape" (645). We should study landscape as more than a scenic text - we need a substantive understanding that recognizes the interplay of city and country, culture, law, etc.

Interesting Specifics:
Excruciatingly dull

The origin of "landscape" is Landschaft (German).

The construction of landscape in art influenced the way the English court saw itself in relation to the country (636).

The science of surveying helped pave the way for the commodification of land into private property parcels (638).

"Rural landscaping created the scenic image of the country community ideal, while helping to undermine the customary law upon which it was based" (640).

"The scenic concept of landscape provided both the template for the transformation of l and into natural parks and the world view or picture that became the mark of education for the ruling elite" (640).

The "Jena circle" was a group of German artists "characterized by a 'universal romanticism' that sought a holistic conception of art, science, and natural law" (641).

Interacts With:

Says new cultural geography is British oriented.

Supposedly, Landschaft geography is very important to the field, and Sauer started this ball rolling.

Seems to interact with Price and Lewis's little squabbling piece about the methods and approaches of geography today. Also interacts with the articles that were in response to that one.

[Apparently I thought that this article seemed to defend Sauer against New Cultural Geography attacks.]

"The Morphology of Landscape"

"The Morphology of Landscape" (1925)
By Carl Sauer

Synopsis: Sauer's main purpose here is to define what geography is. In this 35 page article he discusses different aspects of geography and talks a bit about its history and various ways of looking at the field. He argues that: "Geography is based on the reality of the union of physical and cultural elements of the landscape" (325). He believes there to be a distinct separation between "natural landscape" (areas not touched by man), and "cultural landscape" (places where human influence is manifest). It's important to study the natural environment though, because it "furnishes the materials out of which man builds his culture" (340). He is primarily interested only in the materials cultures leave on the land, as cultural geography is not interested in the customs or beliefs of man, but with "man's record upon the landscape" (342). This material evidence may include housing, population density, production, and communication. Bottom line is, indeed: "Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result" (343).

Interesting Specifics:

Says geography is usually divided into three realms: 1) earth geography (physical geography); 2) life forms in connection with physical environment; 3) "study of the areal or habitat differentiation of the earth" (316).

Landscape is "an area made up of a distinct association of forms, both physical and cultural" (321).

"The content of landscape is something less than the whole of its visible constituents" (324).

Cultural geography is not interested in the customs or beliefs of man, but with "man's record upon the landscape"(342).

Branches of geography: 1) morphology, 2) comparative morphology, 3) historical geography, 4) commercial geography.

Interacts With:
[Yes - Sauer definitely seems apolitical here. Was his focus only on the material/physical artifiacts, with no concern for the underlying beliefs and ideas, his attempt to distinguish geography from cultural anthropology?]
This is considered a key article in the field.

The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape

The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (1996)
By Don Mitchell

Synopsis: "This book explores...the connection between the material production of landscape and the production of landscape representations, between work and the 'exercise of the imagination'..."(1). It basically seeks to "connect the shape of the CA landscape to the process of work that made it...and to wed a literature on landscape with that on labor history" (ix). One of main purposes is to interrogate the difference between representation and reality, and to put the reality of labor specifically back in to our understanding of landscape. Book begins around 1913 and travels through to 1930s through a series of vignettes and discussions of various bad working conditions, workers revolts, and the various attempts to disempower workers. Argument is that in order to make something a landscape, the work and labor behind it must be erased (and this has been particularly true of California which was created as a rural agricultural idyll). Landscape is thus inseparable from capitalist geographies based on commodifications of the land. Pain and work is hidden to produce a pretty image. California is shorthand for American Dream. Mitchell wants to reinsert workers' lives into the landscapes, highlighting their struggles. This is a Marxist labor history of California.

Interesting Specifics:

This book is essentially a labor history of the California landscape.

Follows Denis Cosgrove's line of thinking in that the history of landscape was "inseparable from the construction of capitalist geographies based on the full commodification of the land...and the subsequent need to represent ownership (or non-ownership) as a natural order of society" (4).

Says New Cultural Geographers have gotten too wrapped-up in representation and have abandoned "traditional concerns of geographers with material form" (5).

Landscape is "both a work and an erasure of work" (6).

Takes a very Marxist approach in his belief in labor as one of the defining features of humanity.

[I don't fully understand why the production of landscape should specifically hide labor more than other types of goods. Isn't the labor process hidden from the everything?? I guess this alienation is the central point of Marxism - but anything you don't make yourself is a repository of hidden labor.]

Has a great explanation of Carl Sauer and his view of landscape, that landscape "was the sum of its morphological components" - i.e. its buildings, populations, etc - and that one could understand a people by interpreting the landscape they created (24).

Says Denis Cosgrove led the shift in geography toward ideology and image (26).

Landscape as both a thing and a process/struggle (30).

Wheatland Riots of 1913 resulted when Durst farm workers rioted due to horrid living and working conditions; served to made workers visible and to bring labor problems to the public eye. Led to the formation of the California Commission of Immigration and Housing. The CCIH also held to the belief that bad environments led "triggered" innate bad genetic behavior, so they sought to "environmentally correct" for any such "outbreaks." Sought to hinder the anonymous mobility of workers (so common to the rotating crop pattern of CA) by watching them and increasing their feelings of accountability. A way to strip the power of mobility.

In CA, workers have to remain extremely militant in order not to be naturalized into the landscape.

Interacts With:
Ed Soja, Denis Cosgrove, William Cronon (Changes in the Land), "The Reinvention of Cultural Geography,"
This is a corrective both of "new cultural geography" and its focus on image, and of the "old" cultural geography of Sauer and its obsession with untheoretical morphology.

The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney's Brave New Town

The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney's Brave New Town (1999)
By Andrew Ross

Synopsis: Andrew Ross spent one year living and doing participant observation in Celebration, Florida in order to see what it was like to live there - to discover its problems, its residents, the general attitude there, its issues, etc. Though it's very American in its desire to start from scratch and create something new, Celebration has its good and bad points, like all other towns. Though Celebration's marketers rely heavily on allusions to "childhood innocence" and "the good old days," it is a high tech place with a progressive alternative public school that parents tend to squabble over (Ross claims it's because they viewed the school as a consumer product that may not have been delivering results). Ross also points out that many residents were angry about the "shoddy construction" of Celebration's homes. Basically, asks a few questions: Can a corporation provide a public realm? is this just another privatopia? What about taste/aesthetics? Is it the shape itself of New Urbanism that increases a sense of community, or is it the people who seek that out?

Interesting Specifics:

Celebration is all about the "iconography of innocence" (16).

Contains an interesting section on model home interiors and market research (pp. 25-27).

Attacks Kunstler for his "crotchety version of orderly civic conduct" (76) and says it is "stuffed with contempt for lower-middle-class taste" (76).

New Urbanism clings hard to the belief that "the design of a physical environment has a fundamental impact upon social behavior" (78).

"The closer people live to one another the more likely they are to guard their privacy" (85).

Pattern books contain all the design a developer could use.

Public schools have long been seen as "the unique source of American national unity" (138).

Spends a lot of time examining Celebration's school, which can be seen as its one utopian element - and which has been, ironically, the source of most of the city's controversy.

Says that the trend of saying "it's not natural to notice skin color" is just the latest from of racism (270).

There's a seedy tourist attraction called "Old Town" right near Celebration.

Interacts With:
Behind the Gates, Brave New Neighborhoods, Building Suburbia

The Making of the American Landscape

The Making of the American Landscape (1990)
Edited by Michael P. Conzen

Synopsis: Tis book is a compilation of essays which survey the American landscape via some major historical forces that have shaped it. It focuses on "themes about clusters of related landscape processes set in a broadly historical and regional framework"(6). Moves chronologically to some degree, but is more thematic. It includes essays on climate and natural features, immigrant and colonist legacies (especially the vast Spanish imprint and the way it has been downplayed), plantations, planning and the grid pattern, forest-clearing, industrialization and urbanization, cars, weather, and vernacular houses (especially the ways in which buildings reflect adaptations to lands and climate, as well as cultural beliefs). The overall argument holding these essays together is loose, but is basically that culture leaves its imprint on the landscape, and thus meaning and a layered cultural history lie all around us.

Interesting Specifics:
[Lots of Steve's Intro to AMS material seems to derive from this].
Chapter 17 on landscapes of the wealthy is interesting.

Interacts With:
Building Suburbia, The Modern Urban Landscape,

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (1982)
By Marshall Berman

Synopsis: Basic question is: How can we learn from the modernisms of the past, and draw from their vital and exciting energies to re-ignite a world of connection, meaning, and vibrant understanding today? Defines modernism as "the struggle to make ourselves at home in a constantly changing world" (6). Modernism is both exciting in its maelstrom form, and potentially destructive, so we must learn how to make meaning from it, and one way of doing this is through analyzing modernism's pasts. Examines Faust; Marx as a guy fascinated by energy and potential of modern capitalism but angry that the result was only oppression and the chasing of money; Baudelaire and the excitement of the Parisian boulevard; St. Petersberg as an "underdeveloped" anti-modern modern place and the Nevsky Prospect - with its jumble of classes - as the embodiment of modernity; New York and Robert Moses (and his jackassery) and the optimism of Jane Jacobs. Each example highlights notion that modernity should be all about the maelstrom. This is a slight reworking of Marxist ideas, and shows Marx was excited about potential of modernist energy and creation. Berman perhaps has presentist concerns in mind, perhaps over how to reinvigorate our political culture of apathy and to reignite a vital sense of urbanism and public space. Tone is definitely romantic and optimistic and even utopian, and seeks to rescue us from postmodern ennui and cynicism.

Interesting Specifics:
Modernity promises both boundless adventure, growth, and transformation - and the threat to destroy all of this (15).

Boulevards created a powerful stage on which to be "private in public" (152).

Interacts With:

The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society

The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society (1997)

By Lucy Lippard

Synopsis: Lippard is an art-critic/teacher who's concerned with "The historical narrative as it is written in the landscape or place by the people who live or live there" (7). Mostly, she is advocating for “the possibility of an art boasting stronger contextual ties and audience access” (263); art that arises from the conditions of the place and says something to many people. This is because today local art is “about but not of a place” (283). Art governed by the “place ethic” would be: specific, collaborative, generous and open-ended, appealing, simple and familiar enough to attract people, layered and complex and unfamiliar enough to hold attention, evocative, provocative, and critical (286-87). Overall tone of the book is very activist-oriented, with the view that we need public art so that we can better understand each other and our connections to place. Seems to be advocating a kind of regionalism. Seems to be very influenced by early 1990s "decline of place" trope - esp. Kunstler and Margaret Crawford- hence her belief that place needs to be rescued from its current "homogenization." Tone is also romantic, poetic, personal, and activist.

Interesting Specifics:

“Each time we enter a new place, we become one of the ingredients of an existing hybridity” (6).

“If space is where culture is lived, the place in the result of the union” (10).

The Western world views Nature as something apart from humans – to be held at a distance and in awe, or else “raped.” [This idea connects with Jennifer Price, etc.]

Rebecca Solnit quote: “[Suburbia] seemed to me a voluntary limbo, a condition more like sedation than exile, for exiles know what’s missing” (225).

“If the city has stood for vice, and nature for virtue, then the suburb is morally somewhere in between” (226).

Interacts With:

Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs, Elvis Culture,

Building Suburbia: Green Fields And Urban Growth, 1820-2000

Building Suburbia: Green Fields And Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (2003)
By Dolores Hayden

Synopsis: This book is a history of suburban development from 1820-2000, with the theme that the suburbs represent the triple dream of "house plus land [nature] plus community" (8). The book looks at what she deems to be seven historic patterns of suburban neighborhood: 1) Borderlands (1820s - ; picturesque style ala Andrew Jackson Downing with a focus on landscape and lots of plants, flowers; Catherine Beecher and the idealization of women's sphere and sacred domesticity); 2) Picturesque Enclaves (1850s - ; "were the most important secular manifestations of a wider communitarian movement whose adherents believed that building a model community in a natural setting led the reform of society" (45); Llewellyn Park, NJ (1857), Riverside, IL (1869, but Frederick Law Olmstead); 3) Streetcar Buildouts (1870s-1910s; followed transport lines yet still close to center; big push for homeownership); 4) Mail-Order and Self-Built Suburbs (1910-; rise of pre-cut catalogue houses ala Sears; increased zoning and planning; federal involvement in the 1930s); 5) Sitcom Suburbs (1940s - ; FHA loans; racism and sexism; Levittown and Lakewood; cult of consumption and domesticity); 6) Edge Nodes (1950s - ; rise of strip malls and car-centric living; Interstate Highway Act; rise of malls; Title VII New Towns like Columbia, MD; chain stores and big boxes; 7) Rural Fringes (rise of telecommuting and the dispersal of homes; rise of "valhallas" - fancy nature-infused spots). Ends with a brief discussion of nostalgia and futurism as embodied by Seaside and Celebration (nostalgia), and "smart houses" and digital houses (futurism) in which technology will play an even bigger role. We should value older suburbs as well, and the search for more democratic forms in the future will be political.

Interacts With:
The Celebration Chronicles, The Modern Urban Landscape, Brave New Neighborhoods, Behind the Gates,
Is a very straightforward and non-political survey of suburban history in the same spirit as Relph's Modern Urban Landscape. Hayden of course does have a little bit of preservationist's bent, esp. at the end.