The Cultural Geography Reader

The Cultural Geography Reader draws together fifty-two classic and contemporary abridged readings that represent the scope of the discipline and its key concepts. Readings have been selected based on their originality, accessibility and empirical focus, allowing students to grasp the conceptual and theoretical tools of cultural geography through the grounded research of leading scholars in the field. Each of the eight sections begins with an introduction that discusses the key concepts, its history and relation to cultural geography and connections to other disciplines and practices. Six to seven abridged book chapters and journal articles, each with their own focused introductions, are also included in each section.

The readability, broad scope, and coverage of both classic and contemporary pieces from the US and UK makes The Cultural Geography Reader relevant and accessible for a broad audience of undergraduate students and graduate students alike. It bridges the different national traditions in the US and UK, as well as introducing the span of classic and contemporary cultural geography. In doing so, it provides the instructor and student with a versatile yet enduring benchmark text.

Timothy S. Oakes teaches geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. His research focuses on China’s cultural economy, culture industries, and tourism development. He is the author of Tourism and Modernity in China (1998) and co-editor of Travels in Paradox (2006) and Translocal China (2006).
Patricia L. Price teaches geography at Florida International University in Miami. Her research focuses on Latinas/os in US cities, the US–Mexico borderlands, and popular religiosity. She is the author of Dry Place: Landscapes of Belonging and Exclusion (2004) and co-author of The Human Mosaic: A Thematic Introduction to Cultural Geography (2005).

General Introduction Section 1: Approaching Culture. Introduction. 'Culture' Raymond Williams. 'Community' E.P Thompson. 'Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture' Clifford Geertz. 'The Concept(s) of Culture' William Sewell, Jr. 'Writing Against Culture' Lila Abu-Lughod. 'Beyond "Culture": Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference' Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson. 'Research, Performance, and Doing Human Geography: Some Reflections on the Diary-Photograph, Diary-Interview Method' Alan Latham Section 2: Cultural Geography: A Transatlantic Genealogy. Introduction. 'Culture' Friedrich Ratzel. 'The Physiogamy of France' Paul Vidal de la Blache. 'The Morphology of Landscape' Carl Sauer. 'The Industrial Revolution and the Landscape' W.G. Hoskins. 'Process' Wilbur Zelinsky. 'The Idea of German Cultural Regions in the Third Reich: The Work of Franz Petri' Karl Ditt. 'The Search for the Common Ground: Estyn Evans’s Ireland' Brian J. Graham. 'Back to the Land: Historiography, Rurality and the Nation in Interwar Wales' Pyrs Gruffudd Section 3: Landscape. Introduction. 'The Word Itself' J.B. Jackson. 'California: The Beautiful and the Damned' Don Mitchell. 'Imperial Landscape' W.J.T. Mitchell. 'Looking at Landscape: The Uneasy Pleasures of Power' Gillian Rose. 'Geography is Everywhere: Culture and Symbolism in Human Landscapes' Denis Cosgrove. 'From Discourse to Landscape: A Kingly Reading' James Duncan. 'Reconfiguring the "Site" and "Horizon" of Experience' Michael Bull Section 4: Nature. Introduction. 'Nature' Raymond Williams. 'Creating a Second Nature' Clarence Glacken. 'Living Outdoors with Mrs. Panther' ‘Ajax’. 'Nature at Home' Alexander Wilson. 'Orchard' Owain Jones and Paul Cloke. 'Le Pratique Sauvage: Race, Place, and the Human-Animal Divide' Glen Elder, Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel Section 5: Identity and Place in a Global Context. Introduction. 'A Global Sense of Place' Doreen Massey. 'New Cultures for Old?' Stuart Hall. 'National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees' Liisa Malkki. 'Shades of Shit' Keith Basso. 'Culture Sits in Places: Reflections on Globalism and Subaltern Strategies of Localization' Arturo Escobar. 'No Place Like Heimat: Images of Home(land)' David Morely and Kevin Robins Section 6: Home and Away. Introduction. 'The Stranger' Georg Simmel. 'Traveling Cultures' James Clifford. 'The Production of Mobilities' Tim Cresswell. 'Of Nomads and Vagrants: Single Homelessness and Narratives of Home as Place' Jon May. 'The Tourist at Home' Lucy Lippard Section 7: Geographies of Difference. Introduction. 'Imaginative Geography and its Representations: Orientalizing the Oriental' Edward Said. 'On Not Excluding Half of the Human in Human Geography' Janice Monk and Susan Hanson. 'Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination' Bell Hooks. 'Mapping the Pure and the Defiled' David Sibley. 'Some Thoughts on Close(t) Spaces' Robyn Longhurst. 'Contested Terrain: Teenagers in Public Space' Gill Valentine. 'The Geography Club' Brent Hartinger Section 8: Culture as Resource. Introduction. 'Commercial Cultures: Transcending the Cultural and the Economic' Peter Jackson. 'The Expediency of Culture' George Yúdice. 'Whose Culture? Whose City?' Sharon Zukin. 'The Invention of Regional Culture' Meric Gertler. 'Destination Museum' Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. 'Performing Work: Bodily Representations in Merchant Banks' Linda McDowell and Gill Court