Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction

Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction (2000)
By Don Mitchell

Synopsis: This book seeks to explore the "culture wars" and the way culture, power, and place are constructed and intertwined. Provides a strong overview of the evolution of cultural geography as a discipline while also discussing the rise of cultural studies. This book itself focuses on the materialist, cultural side of things, that material existence is what determines consciousness (Marxism). Says that culture is a site of struggle, and cultural hegemony is the way the dominant group tries to make their own way seem "natural." Culture is also basically the way people make sense of what they're doing. Also discusses the cultural and spatial turn of the 1980s, the realization that culture is spatial. Bottom line: Cultural geography is cultural politics.

Interesting Specifics:

"...the 'work of culture' is to advance social reproduction (or societal integration) through the making and unmaking of differences" (88).

"Through the landscape, politics is fully aestheticized" (139).

Landscapes are "places where discourse and material practices meet - where acts of representation...and the material acts of living...inevitably intersect" (143).

The Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded in 1964 by Richard Hoggart and "flourished under the direction of Stuart Hall in the 1970s" (49).

"The Reinvention of Cultural Geography"

"The Revinvention of Cultural Geography"
By Marie Price and Martin Lewis (1993)

Synopsis: This article started a series of arguments and responses, and is basically refuting the "new cultural geographers'" claim that the "old" Berkeley School style was highly problematic and that the "new" people are doing something totally different. Feels that new cultural geographers critique the Berkeley School for only being concerned with artifacts, and for being anti-ethnographical and very conservative. Price and Lewis say no, that Berkeley School is not just about artifacts. and that Sauer never really did embrace the problematic superorganic model. Denis Cosgrove responds by saying he doesn't consider himself part of any school, and maybe Price and Lewis are pissed because geography is more about the city now. James Duncan replies that Sauer must have had an implicit theory of culture, and maybe is did fit superorganic model. Peter Jackson says fuck off, there is no coherent "new cultural geography" group, so stop policing the boundaries. Bottom line question: Has cultural geography split from its Berkeley roots, or has it simply broadened?

Geographical Imaginations

Geographical Imaginations
By Derek Gregory (1994)

Synopsis: This book details various episodes in the history of geography and does so by showing the ways they interact with other histories. It also focuses on "the problematic of visualization," or the way in which sight has come to dominate the modern era (15-16). By the end of the nineteenth century, it was common for "European ways of knowing to render things as objects to be viewed " (34), which basically served to create a distance between the observer and the observed - a main definer of modernity. His book focuses mostly on a history of different understandings of space. Spends some time on postmodern thinkers as well. Talks a lot about Harvey (actually seems to summarize a lot of his work) and criticizes him for being too Western-centric and lacking in feminist perspective. Talks also about Lefebvre and his view that the visual has taken over, leaving an absence of any bodily dimension (392). Ends with idea that we need to come up with a more holistic and true human geography.

Interesting Specifics:

Says David Harvey and others view Haussmann's redo of Paris as a triumph of bourgeois values, making the public spaces akin to bourgeois private spaces (222).

The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise

The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise (1992)

By David N. Livingstone

Synopsis: This is an intellectual history of the field of geography, starting in the 1400s, of key chapters within geography that asks: What role did geography play in the past, what was it used for (i.e. religion, politics, economics), who benefited and who lost, and why were certain theories generated and accepted/rejected. Basically, this book seeks to recontextualize the history of geography by breaking it down into a few major eras beginning with the 1400s-1500s as an Age of Reconnaissance – exploration, discovery, and voyage; belief in astrology and magic and astronomy; mapping or regions based on astrological signs; obsession with maps and representations; world as a machine with parts made by divine creator – rise of natural theology/teleology/blend of religion and science; tool of imperialism with an increased focus on environmental determinism; critique of environmental determinism via French geographers and Carl Sauer who advocated for role of human agency and focus on regional identities [wait – I though Sauer believed in superorganic?]; geography as bridge between science/nature and culture/human; increased focus on statistics and quantification – geography as a spatial science; increased effort to re-humanize geography and bring the human angle back in; rise of postmodernism, fragmentation, and the particularity or place. Bottom line: Geography has always been a contested field subject to the various ideological needs and influences of various historical periods.

Interesting Specifics:

Scientific Revolution = 1500s-1600s; though magic and astrology often co-existed with science

1600s = early “intelligent design” theory, that if all was so perfect on earth, it must have been designed by a wise creator (108)

1700s = rise of exploration for scientific purposes, whereas before was mostly for imperialistic, evangelical, or commercial purposes (125)

American geography was greatly bolstered by Thomas Jefferson, as he was obsessed with science and nature and with documenting the vast U.S. natural resources; Livingstone called Jefferson the “father of American geography.”

Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804

Late 19^th-early 20^th-century saw rise of climatology and the supposed link between climate and the temperament of races, leading to a “moral economy” of climate (235).

Geopolitics emerges then too; bottom line: in 1900s geography still being used for “practical” purposes

1970s marks desire for return of the human element in geography, rise of humanistic geography.