Cultural Geographies: People, Places and Environments

This book is about the craft of cultural geography –its theories, methodologies and practices—and the ways the world is opened up with a critical focus on places and spaces. Places and spaces, and the ways in which human societies create, control and transform them is of pressing concern. There is globalization, terrorism, climate change, nationalism, and heightened geo-political competition between countries, along with the rapid internal political, economic, and social restructuring within countries. People are on the move within state boundaries and internationally causing a myriad of vacuums and pressures. Within cities, wealth and poverty reside cheek-by-jowl. Racial and ethnic minorities along with women, children and the elderly are increasingly exploited or disempowered. Many of our neighborhoods are no longer safe and the household is an increasingly marginalized economic unit. Urban gentrification is rampant in inner cities while suburbs languish. What we know as ‘nature’ is rapidly disappearing with urban and ex-urban encroachment, or it is redefined as entertainment. Wild places, from Yosemite to Everest, are becoming commodified into Disney-like recreations. As societies it seems that we are increasingly polarized economically, socially and politically. With its focus on people, places and environments, this book is concerned with all these and many other related issues. It opens up our cultural world and identifies issues worth attending to and tensions worth resolving along with those best left alone.