Cultural Geography : A Critical Introduction

by Mitchell, Donald

• ISBN13: 9781557868923
• ISBN10: 1557868921
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-06-08
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This book provides a critical evaluation of the transformation of cultural geography which has occurred over the past two decades. Cultural Geography explains cultural change in different geographical settings, from the politics of everyday life to the production and consumption of landscapes, to the politics of sexuality, gender, race, and nationality. Using a range of contemporary culture wars as examples - ranging from a struggle over public art in Denver to the politics of Jean-Marie le Pen in France - the author illustrates how cultural geographic analysis can be an important tool for understanding, and progressively intervening in contemporary cultural change. The book is divided into three parts. Part I considers the historical development of cultural geography and the critical examination of cultural theory, both within geography and other fields from which geographers draw. The second part of the book explores the most traditional of cultural geography's research foci - the landscape. It examines what a landscape is, what it means, and how we should understand its production and use. The final part of the book comprises five chapters that explore different aspects of cultural politics. Moving between the practices of control and resistance in each chapter, Mitchell shows how cultural meaning, and the spaces in which we live, are continually struggled over. Writing with the needs of advanced undergraduates and post-graduates in mind, Mitchell unravels complex ideas, yet at the same time, challenges the reader to think critically about cultural geography and about the cultural geographies that structure our lives.

Author Biography

Don Mitchell is Associate Professor of Geography at Syracuse University. He has previously taught at the University of Colorado, has been North American Editor of the journal Ecumene and is on the editorial board of Antipode. In 1998 he was named as a MacArthur Fellow. He is the author of The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) as well as numerous journal articles.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
A Critical Introduction	xiii
PART I: THE POLITICS OF CULTURE	1	(88)
Culture Wars: Culture is Politics by Another Name	3	(34)
Culture Wars	3	(10)
What is ``Culture''?	13	(3)
Culture in Cultural Geography	16	(13)
Environmental Determinism	17	(3)
Carl Sauer and Cultural Theory	20	(6)
The Morphology of Landscape	26	(3)
Superorganicism and Its Discountents	29	(5)
Wilbur Zelinsky and Superorganicism	29	(4)
The Critique of Superorganicism and the Birth of ``New Cultural Geography''	33	(1)
Conclusion: The Irrelevancy of Cultural Geography	34	(3)
Cultural Studies and the New Cultural Geography	37	(29)
The Relevancy of Cultural Geography	37	(5)
Cultural Studies	42	(15)
The Roots of Cultural Studies	42	(13)
The Field of Cultural Studies	55	(2)
The New Cultural Geography	57	(7)
Postmodernism and the Cultural Turn	58	(2)
The Scope of New Cultural Geography	60	(3)
``Culture'' is Spatial	63	(1)
Conclusion	64	(2)
From Values to Value and Back Again: The Political Economy of Culture	66	(23)
Cultural Productions	66	(4)
``Traditional'' Values, Surplus Value, and the Power to Generalize	70	(3)
Cultural Chaos: A Critique of New Theories of Culture	73	(5)
Culture as Mirage: The Infinite Regress of Culture	75	(3)
An Alternative Framework: The Political Economy of ``Culture''	78	(7)
Culture as Ideology	78	(1)
``Culture'' and Economy: Questions of Social Reproduction	79	(3)
The ``Critical Infrastructure''	82	(3)
Conclusion: Values, Geographies, and Audiences	85	(4)
PART II: THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE	89	(56)
The Work of Landscape: Producing and Representing the Cultural Scene	91	(29)
Johnstown	91	(10)
Landscape as Work	101	(13)
Vancouver's Chinatown	104	(5)
Sacre-Coeur	109	(5)
Representations: Or the Work of Landscape as ``Scene''	114	(6)
The Landscape Idea: Representing Ideology	115	(2)
Naturalization and Contestation	117	(3)
Metaphors to Live By: Landscapes as Systems of Social Reproduction	120	(25)
Metaphors to Live By	121	(4)
Gendered Landscapes	125	(4)
Landscape as Expectation: Aesthetics, Power, and the Good Life	129	(10)
Shopping for Signs: The Cultural Geography of the Mall	129	(6)
The City as Mall: Modern Capitalism and Postmodern Urbanism	135	(4)
The Circulation of Meaning: Landscape as a System of Social Reproduction	139	(5)
Landscape and the Reproduction of Labor and Capital	139	(3)
Landscape as a Form of Regulation	142	(2)
Conclusion	144	(1)
PART III: CULTURAL POLITICS	145	(140)
Cultural Politics: The Dialectics of Spectacle	147	(24)
Resistance: Limits and Opportunities	148	(10)
Popular Culture as Resistance	149	(2)
Tactics and Strategies	151	(2)
Tiananmen, Resistance, and Popular Culture in China	153	(5)
Cultural Politics	158	(11)
Cultural Politics as ``Resistance''	159	(1)
Punks and Carnivals: Strategies of Inversion	160	(3)
Spectacle and Resistance	163	(6)
Conclusion: Culture War as a Geography of Spectacle and Transgression	169	(2)
Sex and Sexuality: The Cultural Politics and Political Geography of Liberation	171	(28)
The Geography of Sex	171	(5)
Geographies of Sexuality	176	(4)
Space and Sexuality in Capitalism	180	(4)
Gay and Lesbian Neighborhoods as Spaces of Cultural Exploration and Politics	184	(9)
Gay Neighborhoods: Ghettos or Liberated Zones?	184	(6)
Lesbian Territoriality	190	(3)
Sexual Politics	193	(4)
The Politics of AIDS: Grief, Anger, Memory	194	(3)
Conclusion: Sexual Worlds	197	(2)
Feminism and Cultural Change: Geographies of Gender	199	(31)
Public and Private: Gendered Divisions of Space	201	(12)
Architecture and Gender Roles	204	(3)
The Spatial Entrapment of Women	207	(2)
Breaking Open Public Space	209	(4)
Rethinking Space	213	(4)
Space and the Cultural Construction of Femininity and Masculinity	217	(6)
Femininity and the Frontier	219	(1)
Masculinity and Femininity Embodied	220	(3)
Gender and the Visual Landscape	223	(5)
Conclusion	228	(2)
``A Place for Everyone'': Cultural Geographies of Race	230	(29)
Race as a Geographical Project	230	(3)
The Vagaries and Vulgarities of Race	233	(8)
``Race'' in Western Ideology	233	(7)
The Arguments Against ``Race''	240	(1)
The Bell Curve and Racism's Geography	241	(9)
The Bell Curve's Racist Reasoning	242	(4)
The Bell Curve's Racist Geography	246	(4)
Apartheid and The Geography of The Race Idea	250	(5)
Conclusion: Space Makes Race	255	(4)
Geographies of Belonging? Nations, Nationalism, and Identity in an Era of ``Deterritorialization''	259	(26)
Nations and Nationalism: Territory and Identity	263	(10)
Violence and Wholeness: Germanness and Heimat	263	(6)
Nation	269	(2)
Nationalism	271	(2)
Flows and Networks: Deterritorialization and Identity	273	(8)
Networks	273	(3)
Cultural Flow and Social Reproduction	276	(3)
Deterritorialized Identities	279	(2)
Conclusion: Geometries of Power	281	(4)
PART IV: CONCLUSION	285	(10)
Cultural Rights, Cultural Justice, Cultural Geography	287	(8)
Cultural Justice, Cultural Rights	288	(5)
What is Culture? What is Cultural Geography	293	(2)
Bibliography	295	(23)
Index	318