Curso Espacio y Cultura Lees

Space and culture
L. Lees
GY3153, 2790153
2011
Undergraduate study in
Economics, Management,
Finance and the Social Sciences
This is an extract from a subject guide for an undergraduate course offered as part of the
University of London International Programmes in Economics, Management, Finance and
the Social Sciences. Materials for these programmes are developed by academics at the
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
For more information, see: www.londoninternational.ac.uk
This guide was prepared for the University of London International Programmes by:
L. Lees, BA(Hons), PhD, Reader in Geography, Department of Geography, King’s College
London, University of London, www.kcl.ac.uk
This is one of a series of subject guides published by the University. We regret that due to
pressure of work the author is unable to enter into any correspondence relating to, or arising
from, the guide. If you have any comments on this subject guide, favourable or unfavourable,
please use the form at the back of this guide.
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Published by: University of London

© University of London 2007
Reprinted with minor revisions 2011
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Contents
Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................. 1
Aims of the course.......................................................................................................... 1
Learning outcomes......................................................................................................... 1
Syllabus.......................................................................................................................... 1
How to use this subject guide......................................................................................... 2
Reading advice............................................................................................................... 2
Essential reading............................................................................................................ 2
Further reading............................................................................................................... 3
Online study resources.................................................................................................. 12
Examination advice...................................................................................................... 13
Part 1: Approaching socio-cultural geography...................................................... 15
Chapter 1: The history of social and cultural geography...................................... 17
Essential reading.......................................................................................................... 17
Further reading............................................................................................................. 17
Learning outcomes....................................................................................................... 18
Introduction................................................................................................................. 18
The history of social geography (until the 1980s)........................................................... 18
The history of cultural geography (until the 1980s)........................................................ 19
A reminder of your learning outcomes........................................................................... 21
Sample examination questions ..................................................................................... 21
Chapter 2: The cultural turn.................................................................................. 23
Further reading............................................................................................................. 23
Introduction................................................................................................................. 24
The reconceptualisation of social and cultural geography............................................... 24
Rethinking the social.................................................................................................... 24
Rethinking the cultural................................................................................................. 25
Sample examination questions...................................................................................... 25
Chapter 3: Space and place................................................................................... 27
Essential reading ......................................................................................................... 27
Further reading............................................................................................................. 27
Introduction................................................................................................................. 28
Space........................................................................................................................... 28
Place............................................................................................................................ 30
Chapter 4: Landscape and representation............................................................ 33
Further reading............................................................................................................. 33
Introduction................................................................................................................. 34
Landscape as text......................................................................................................... 34
i
153 Space and culture
The crisis of representation........................................................................................... 35

More-than-representational ......................................................................................... 36
Chapter 5: Approaching social and cultural geography........................................ 39
Further reading............................................................................................................. 39
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 40
Logical positivism ........................................................................................................ 40
Critical realism............................................................................................................. 41
Postmodernist reactions................................................................................................ 42
Post-structuralist approaches........................................................................................ 43
Part 2: Thematic socio-cultural geographies......................................................... 45
Chapter 6: Colonial and postcolonial geographies............................................... 47
Further reading............................................................................................................. 47
Introduction................................................................................................................. 48
Colonial geographies.................................................................................................... 49
Post-colonial geographies............................................................................................. 50
Chapter 7: Spatial inequalities.............................................................................. 53
Further reading............................................................................................................. 53
Introduction................................................................................................................. 54
Uneven development theory......................................................................................... 55
The ‘cultural turn’ engages with inequality ................................................................... 55
Global/macro-scale inequalities.................................................................................... 56
Local/micro-scale inequalities........................................................................................ 57
Chapter 8: Race and place..................................................................................... 59
Further reading............................................................................................................. 59
Introduction................................................................................................................. 60
Race as a geographical project...................................................................................... 60
The social construction of race...................................................................................... 61
Apartheid and the geography of race ‘idea’................................................................... 62
How cultures relate to one another .............................................................................. 62
Chapter 9: Gendered spaces.................................................................................. 65
Further reading............................................................................................................. 65
ii
Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................. 67
The gender of geography/geography of gender............................................................. 67
Studies of gendered spaces........................................................................................... 68
Chapter 10: Sexed spaces ..................................................................................... 73
Further reading............................................................................................................. 73
Introduction................................................................................................................. 74
The social construction of sexuality............................................................................... 75
Gay and lesbian spaces in the city................................................................................. 76
(Re)negotiating heterosexual space............................................................................... 77
Appendix 1: Sample examination paper............................................................... 79
Appendix 2: Advice on answering some of the examination questions............... 81
Appendix 3: Glossary ............................................................................................ 85
Terms........................................................................................................................... 85
Theories....................................................................................................................... 85
iii
Notes
iv
Introduction
Introduction
The so-called ‘cultural turn’ in geography brought about new ways of

thinking about geography and has taken social and cultural geography
into an exciting new terrain in which space and place are being critically
remapped. This course will be of interest to all those who are interested
in exploring the richness and diversity of everyday life. It means learning
to think critically about the world and your own and other people’s
understandings of it. Understanding the different facets of our social and
cultural world means concerning ourselves with not just the social and
cultural facets of life, but with how these are bound up with the economic,
political, environmental and historical, and how all of these are bound up
with questions of space, spatiality and place.
Aims of the course

The aims of this course are to:
• introduce you to the sub-discipline of ‘new’ cultural geography and to
position this development within the histories of social geography and
cultural geography
• enable you to think about space and culture through the lens of ‘new’
cultural geography
• provide you with understanding of the methods that ‘new’ cultural
geographers have adopted in their studies of space and culture.
Learning outcomes
On completion of this course, you should be able to:
• describe the theoretical contribution and discuss the development of
‘new’ cultural geography
• critically analyse space and culture through the lens of ‘new’ cultural
geography
• discuss the value of social constructionism to space and culture
• apply a range of social and cultural texts in analysis of key course
concepts.
Syllabus
Prerequisites: if taken as part of a BSc degree, 09 Human geography.
This course reflects on contemporary socio-cultural geography. It
investigates the social and cultural construction of spaces and places, both
theoretically and through empirical case studies. The concepts of space
and representation are used as hinges for discussions on issues such as
gender, sexuality, travel and homelessness.
Part 1 focuses on the coming together of social and cultural geography in
the late 1980s and the 1990s through the ‘cultural turn’ in the discipline.
Ever present in the background are the changing conceptualisations
of space and place in geography, and theoretical and methodological
developments associated with the ‘crisis in representation’. More recent
work that seeks to move beyond representational theory is also discussed.
1
Part 2 draws on the conceptual, theoretical and methodological

developments outlined in Part 1 and investigates the social and cultural
construction of space, and in that place, through thematic discussions of
colonial and postcolonial geographies, issues of inequality, race, gender
and sexuality.
How to use this subject guide

Begin this course by first reading through each chapter to give you an idea
of what the chapter is about and how it fits into the course as a whole.
Then read through the essential readings and further readings. As you go
along, take note of the learning outcomes for each chapter.
Activities have been provided throughout. It is important that you do these
as they will help you to understand the topics more fully.
Reading advice
At the beginning of each of the chapters of this guide you will find advice
on what books you need to buy or otherwise have access to. You should
not continue to use an old edition of a textbook if a new edition has
been published. If the latest edition is more recent than the one referred
to in the subject guide, use the index and tables of contents to identify
the relevant parts of the new edition. Beyond these textbooks I strongly
recommend that you read as many texts from the Further reading as
possible. You need to store the information you gain from your reading, so
it is necessary for you to make notes. First, note the details of the book or
article in case you need to find it again, and also because we expect you
to reference your sources in your written examination essays. Then ensure
that you make your notes as full as possible. It is also a very useful practice
to ‘collect’ case studies in order to illustrate examination answers, where
appropriate, with real examples rather than dealing in generalities.
For ease of reference we have provided below a listing of all the reading
and resources in this course.
Essential reading
Anderson, K. and F. Gale (eds) Cultural Geographies. (Australia: Longman,
1999) second edition [ISBN 9780582810860].
Crang, M. Cultural Geography. (London: Routledge, 1998) [ISBN
9780415140836].
Jackson, P. Maps of Meaning: an Introduction to Cultural Geography. (London;
New York: Routledge, 2006) reprinted [ISBN 0415090881].
Pain, R. et al. Introducing Social Geographies. (London: Arnold, 2001) [ISBN
0340720069].
Valentine, G. Social Geographies: Space and Society. (Harlow: Prentice Hall,
2001) [ISBN 0582357772].
Dictionaries and handbooks

The following dictionaries and handbooks are useful:
Anderson, K., M. Domosh, N. Thrift and S. Pile (eds) Handbook of Cultural
Geography. (London: Sage, 2002) [ISBN 076196925X].
Johnson, N., J. Duncan and R. Schein A Companion to Cultural Geography.
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) [ISBN 0631230505].
2
Introduction
Johnston, R.J., D. Gregory, G. Pratt and M. Watts (eds) The Dictionary of

Human Geography. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) fourth edition [ISBN
0631205616]. Please note a new edition is forthcoming.
Sibley, D., N. Washbourne, D. Atkinson and P. Jackson (eds) Cultural
Geography: a Critical Dictionary of Ideas. (London; New York: I.B. Taurus,
2005) [ISBN 1860647022].
Further reading
Please note that as long as you read the Essential reading you are then free
to read around the subject area in any text, paper or online resource. You
will need to support your learning by reading as widely as possible and by
thinking about how these principles apply in the real world. To help you
read extensively, you have free access to the virtual learning environment
(VLE) and University of London Online Library (see below). Other useful
texts for this course include:
Books
Abrahamson, M. ‘Gays and Lesbians in San Francisco’s Castro and Mission
Districts’ in his Urban Enclaves: Identity and Place in America. (New York:
Worth Publishing, 1995) [ISBN 0312114990].
Aitken, S. and G. Valentine Approaches to Human Geography. (London: Sage,
2006) [ISBN 0761942637]. Read the chapter by D. Dixon and J.P. Jones III
‘Feminist geographies of difference, relation and construction’.
Allen, J. and C. Hamnett (eds) A Shrinking World? Global Unevenness and
Inequality. (Oxford: Oxford University Press/The Open University, 1995)
[ISBN 0198741871].
Anderson, B. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. (London: Verso, 1991) [ISBN 0860915468].
Anderson, K. Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875–1980.
(Montreal; Kingston; London; Buffalo: McGill-Queens University Press,
1991) [ISBN 0773513299].
Barnes, T. and D. Gregory (eds) ‘Section 6: Place and Landscape’ in their
Reading Human Geography: the Poetics and Politics of Inquiry. (London:
Arnold, 1997) [ISBN 0470235373]
Barnes, T. and J. Duncan Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the
Representation of Landscape. (London; New York: Routledge, 1992)
[ISBN 0415069831].
Bell, D. and G. Valentine (eds) Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities.
(London; New York: Routledge, 1995) [ISBN 0415111641].
Bird, J., B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson and L. Tickner (eds) Mapping the
Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change. (London: Routledge, 1993)
[ISBN 041507018X] Chapters 1-5.
Blunt, A. and G. Rose (eds) Writing Women and Space: Women’s Colonial and
Post-colonial Geographies. (New York; London: Guildford Press, 1994) [ISBN
0898624983].
Blunt, A. and J. Wills ‘Decolonising Geography: Postcolonial Perspectives’ in
their Dissident Geographies: an Introduction to Radical Ideas and Practice.
(Singapore: Prentice Hall, 2000) [ISBN 0582294894] Chapter 5.
Blunt, A. and J. Wills ‘Embodying Geography: Feminist Geographies of Gender’
in their Dissident Geographies: an Introduction to Radical Ideas and Practice.
(Singapore: Prentice Hall, 2000) [ISBN 0582294894] pp.90-127.
Blunt, A. and J. Wills ‘Sexual Orientations: Geographies of Desire’ in their
Dissident Geographies: an Introduction to Radical Ideas and Practice.
(Singapore: Prentice Hall, 2000) [ISBN 0582294894] pp.128-66.
Blunt, A. Travel, Gender, and Imperialism: Mary Kingsley and West Africa. (New
York; London: Guildford Press, 1994) [ISBN 0898625467].
3
Blunt, A., P. Gruffud, J. May, M. Ogborn and D. Pinder Cultural Geography in

Practice. (Arnold: London, 2004) [ISBN 0340807709].
Brown, M. Closet Space: Geographies of Metaphor from the Body to the Globe.
(London; New York: Routledge, 2000) [ISBN 0415187656].
Browne, K., G. Brown and J. Lim Geographies of Sexuality: Theory, Practice and
Politics. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) [ISBN 0754647617].
Bunge, W. Theoretical Geography. (Lund: CWK Gleerup,1966)
[ISBN 9140024563].
Buttimer, A. and D. Seamon (eds) The Human Experience of Space and Place.
(London: Croom Helm, 1980) [ISBN 0709903200].
Castells, M. and K. Murphy ‘Cultural Identity and Urban Structure: the Spatial
Organization of San Francisco’s Gay Community’ in Fainstein, N. and S.
Fainstein (eds) Urban Policy Under Capitalism. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982)
[ISBN 080391797X].
Castells, M. The City and the Grass Roots. (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1983) [ISBN 0520056175].
Clarke, D. (ed.) The Cinematic City. (London; New York: Routledge, 1997)
[ISBN 0415127467].
Cloke, P. ‘Cultural Turn’ in Johnston, R., D. Gregory, G. Pratt and M. Watts
(eds) The Dictionary of Human Geography. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) [ISBN
0631205616] pp.141-43.
Cloke, P., C. Philo and D. Sadler Approaching Human Geography: an
Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Debates. (London: Sage, 2007)
reprinted [ISBN 0761944850].
Cloke, P., P. Milbourne and R. Widdowfield Rural Homelessness: Issues,
Experiences and Policy Responses. (Bristol: Policy Press, 2002) [ISBN
1861342845].
Conrad, J. Heart of Darkness. (London; New York: W.W. Norton, 2005) fourth
edition [ISBN 0393926362].
Cook, I., D. Crouch, S. Naylor and J. Ryan (eds) Cultural Turns/Geographical
Turns: Perspectives on Cultural Geography. (Singapore: Prentice Hall, 2000)
[ISBN 0582368871].
Cosgrove, D. and S. Daniels (eds) The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the
Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988) [ISBN 0521389151].
Cosgrove, D. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. (Wisconsin: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1998) new edition [ISBN 0299155145].
Daniels, S. ‘Marxism, Culture, and the Duplicity of Landscape’ in Peet, R. and
N. Thrift (eds) New Models in Geography: the Political-Economy Perspective.
(London: Routledge, 1989) Volume 2 [ISBN 0044454201].
Daniels, S. and D. Cosgrove ‘Introduction: the Iconography of Landscape’ in
Cosgrove, D. and S. Daniels (eds) The Iconography of Landscape: Essays
on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) [ISBN 0521389151].
Davis, M. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. (London; New
York: Verso, 1990) [ISBN 0860913031].
Driver, F. Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire. (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2000) [ISBN 0631201122].
Duncan, J. ‘Sites of Representation’ in Duncan, J. and D. Ley (eds) Place/
Culture/Representation. (London; New York: Routledge, 1993) [ISBN
0415094518].
Duncan, J. and D. Ley (eds) Place/Culture/Representation. (London; New York:
Routledge, 1993) [ISBN 0415094518].
Duncan, J. and N. Duncan ‘A Cultural Analysis of Urban Residential Landscapes
in North America: the Case of the Anglophile Elite’ in Agnew, J., J. Mercer
and D. Sopher (eds) The City in Cultural Context. (Boston: Allen and Unwin,
1984) [ISBN 0043011764].
4
Introduction
Duncan, J. The City as Text: the Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the

Kandyan Kingdom. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) [ISBN
052135305X].
Duncan, N. (ed.) BodySpace: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality.
(London: Routledge, 1996) [ISBN 0415144418].
Escobar, A. Encountering Development. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1995) [ISBN 0691001022].
Flowerdew, R. and D. Martin Methods in Human Geography. (London:
Longman, 1997) [ISBN 0582289734] Chapters 2, 7, 8 and 12 only.
Foucault, M. The History of Sexuality. (New York: Vintage Books, 1990) Volume
1; translated by Robert Hurley. [ISBN 0679724699].
Geertz, C. The Interpretation of Cultures. (New York: Basic Books, 2000; original
edition 1973) [ISBN 0465097197].
Greed, C. Women and Planning: Creating Gendered Realities. (London:
Routledge, 1994) [ISBN 0415079810].
Gregory, D. ‘A History of Space’ in his Geographical Imaginations. (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1994) [ISBN 0631183310].
Gregory, D. ‘Space, Human Geography and,’ in Johnston, R., D. Gregory, G.
Pratt and M. Watts (eds) The Dictionary of Human Geography. (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2000) [ISBN 0631205616] pp.767-73.
Gregory, D. and J. Urry (eds) Social Relations and Spatial Structure.
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985) [ISBN 0333354044].
Groth, P. and T. Bressi (eds) Understanding Ordinary Landscapes. (New Haven;
London: Yale University Press, 1997) [ISBN 0300072031].
Haggett, P. Locational Analysis in Human Geography. (London: Edward Arnold,
1965) [ISBN 0312494203].
Hall, S. (ed.) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices.
(Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997) [ISBN 0761954325].
Harvey, D. Explanation in Geography. (London: Edward Arnold, 1969)
[ISBN 0713154640].
Harvey, D. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. (Oxford: Blackwell,
1996) [ISBN 1557866813].
Harvey, D. Social Justice and the City. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973; reissued 1998)
[ISBN 0631164766].
Harvey, D. The Condition of Postmodernity. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989)
[ISBN 0631162941].
Hoggart, K., L. Lees and A. Davies Researching Human Geography. (London:
Arnold, 2001) [ISBN 0340676752] Chapter 1 only.
Hubbard, P., R. Kitchin and G. Valentine Key Thinkers on Space and Place.
(London: Sage, 2004) [ISBN 0761949631].
Jackson, P. (ed.) Race and Racism: Essays in Social Geography. (London:
Routledge, 1987) [ISBN 0043050026].
Jackson, P. and J. Penrose (eds) Constructions of Race, Place and Nation.
(London: UCL Press, 1993, or US edition, University of Minnesota Press,
1994) [ISBN 0816625050].
Jackson, P. and S. Smith Exploring Social Geography. (Boston: Allen and Unwin,
1984) [ISBN 0043011691].
Jacobs, J. Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City. (London; New York:
Routledge, 1996) [ISBN 0415120071].
Johnston, R. A Question of Place: Exploring the Practice of Human Geography.
Jones III, J.P., W. Natter and T. Scatzki (eds) Postmodern Contentions: Epochs,
Politics, Space. (New York: Guilford, 1993) [ISBN 0898624959].
Jones, E. and J. Eyles An Introduction to Social Geography. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1977) [ISBN 0198740638].
King, A. The Bungalow: the Production of a Global Culture. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995). [ISBN 0195095235].
5
Kipling, R. Kim. (London: Viking Press, 1992) reissue edition

[ISBN 0140183523].
Kitchin, R. and N. Tate Conducting Research into Human Geography: Theory,
Methodology and Practice. (Singapore: Prentice Hall, 2000)
[ISBN 0582297974] Chapters 1 and 7 only.
Knopp, L. ‘Gentrification and Gay Neighborhood Formation in New Orleans: a
Case Study’ in Gluckman, A. and B. Reed (eds) Homo Economics: Capitalism,
Community, Lesbian and Gay Life. (London; New York: Routledge, 1997)
[ISBN 0415913799].
Knox, P. and S. Pinch Urban Social Geography: an Introduction. (Harlow:
Prentice Hall, 2006) fifth edition [ISBN 0582381193].
Kobayashi, A. and S. MacKenzie (eds) Remaking Human Geography. (London:
Unwin Hyman, 1989) [ISBN 0044453256].
Kothari, R. Rethinking Development: in Search for Humane Alternatives. (New
York: Horizons, 1989) [ISBN 094525718X].
Laurie, N. et al. Geographies of New Feminism. (London: Longman, 1999) [ISBN
0582320240].
Lees, L., T. Slater and E. Wyly Gentrification. (New York: Routledge, 2007)
[ISBN 0415950376].
Ley, D. ‘Co-Operative Housing as a Moral Landscape: Re-examining the
“Postmodern City”’ in Duncan, J. and D. Ley (eds) Place/Culture/
Representation. (London; New York: Routledge, 1993)
[ISBN 0415094518].
Ley, D. A Social Geography of the City. (New York: Harper and Row, 1983)
[ISBN 0063848759].
Livingstone, D. The Geographical Tradition. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)
[ISBN 0631185860].
Massey, D. ‘A Global Sense of Place’ in Barnes, T. and D. Gregory (eds) Reading
Human Geography: the Poetics and Politics of Inquiry. (London: Arnold,
1997) [ISBN 0470235373]. Also found in Marxism Today, June 1991,
pp.24-29.
Massey, D. Space, Place and Gender. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press, 1994) [ISBN 0816626170].
Massey, D. Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of
Production. (London: Routledge, 1998) second edition [ISBN 0415912962].
MATRIX Making Space: Women and the Man-made Environment. (London: Pluto
Press, 1984) [ISBN 08610046013].
McDowell, L. (ed.) Undoing Place? A Geographical Reader. (London: Arnold,
1997) [ISBN 0340677465].
McDowell, L. Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City. (Oxford: Blackwell,
1997) [ISBN 0631205314].
Miles, R. Racism and Migrant Labour. (London: Routledge, 1982) [ISBN
0710092121].
Mills, S. The American Landscape. (Keele: Keele University Press, 1997) [ISBN
1853311790].
Mitchell, D. Cultural Geography: a Critical Introduction. (Oxford: Blackwell,
2000) [ISBN 1557868921].
Mitchell, T. Colonising Egypt. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
[ISBN 0520075684].
Moorhouse, G. Calcutta: the City Revealed. (Colombia, MO: South Asia Books,
1994) [ISBN 0140095578].
Norton, W. Cultural Geography. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) [ISBN
0195419227].
Pacione, M. (ed.) Social Geography: Progress and Prospect. (London: Croom
Helm, 1987) [ISBN 0709940262].
Panelli, R. Social Geographies: from Difference to Action. (London: Sage, 2004)
[ISBN 0761968946].
6
Introduction
Pawson, E. ‘Postcolonial New Zealand?’ in Anderson, K. and F. Gale, (eds)

Cultural Geography. (Australia: Longman, 1999) second edition [ISBN
0582810868] Chapter 2.
Phillips, R., D. Watt and D. Shuttleton (eds) De-centring Sexualities: Politics
and Representations Beyond the Metropolis. (London; New York: Routledge,
2000) [ISBN 0415194660].
Phillips, R. ‘Colonialism and Postcolonialism’ in Cloke, P., P. Crang and M.
Goodwin (eds) Introducing Human Geographies. (London: Arnold, 1999)
[ISBN 034069193X] pp.277-86.
Phillips, R. Mapping Men and Empire: a Geography of Adventure. (London:
Routledge, 1996) [ISBN 0415137713].
Phillips, R. Sex, Politics and Empire: a Postcolonial Geography. (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2006) [ISBN 0719070066].
Philo, C. (ed.) New Words, New Worlds: Reconceptualising Social and Cultural
Geography. (Proceedings of a conference organised by the ‘Social and
Cultural Geography Study Group’ of the Institute of British Geographers,
1991) [ISBN 0905285328].
Portes, A., M. Castells and L. Benton (eds) The Informal Economy: Studies in
Advanced and Less Developed Countries. (Baltimore, MD; London: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1989) [ISBN 0801837367].
Pratt, M.L. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. (London:
Routledge, 1992) [ISBN 0415060958].
Pratt, G. Working Feminism. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004)
[ISBN 1592132642].
Proctor, J.D. and D. Smith (eds) Geography and Ethics: Journeys in a Moral
Terrain. (London; New York: Routledge, 1999) [ISBN 0415189691].
Rendell, J. ‘Displaying Sexuality: Gendered Identities and the Early Nineteenth-
Century Street’ in Fyfe, N. (ed.) Images of the Street: Planning, Identity
and Control in Public Space. (London; New York: Routledge, 1998) [ISBN
0415154413].
Robertson, G., M. Mash, L. Tickner, J. Brid, B. Curtis and T. Putnam (eds)
Travellers’ Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement. (London; New York:
Routledge, 1994) [ISBN 0415070163].
Robinson, G.M. (ed.) A Social Geography of Canada: Essays in Honour of J.
Wreford Watson. (Edinburgh: North British Publishing, 1988)
[ISBN 0951377019]. This book is useful in indicating the range of social
geography through a group of essays written in honour of the geographer J.
Wreford Watson.
Robinson, J. The Power of Apartheid. (London: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1995)
[ISBN 0750626895].
Rodaway, P. Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense, Place. (London; New York:
Routledge, 1994) [ISBN 0415088291].
Rose, G. Feminism and Geography: the Limits of Geographical Knowledge.
(Cambridge: Polity, 1993) [ISBN 0745611567].
Rose, G. Visual Methodologies: an Introduction to Interpreting Visual Objects.
(London: Sage, 2007) second edition [ISBN 1412921910].
Ryan, J. Picturing Empire. (London: Reaktion, 1997; Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1998) [ISBN 0226732339].
Said, E. Culture and Imperialism. (London: Vintage, 1993) [ISBN 0679750541].
Said, E. Orientalism. (New York: Random House, 1979) [ISBN 039474067X].
Sayer, A. Method in Social Science: a Realist Approach. (London: Routledge,
1992) second edition [ISBN 0415076072].
Sayer, A. Realism and Social Science. (London: Sage, 1999) [ISBN
0761961240].
Seager, J. and L. Nelson (eds) Companion to Feminist Geography. (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2004) [ISBN 1405101865].
Seale, C. (ed.) Researching Society and Culture. (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2004)
second edition [ISBN 0761941975].
7
Shields, R. Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. (London:

Routledge, 1991) [ISBN 0415080223].
Shurmer-Smith, P. Doing Cultural Geography. (London: Sage, 2002) [ISBN
0761965653].
Sibley, D. Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West. (London:
Routledge, 1995) [ISBN 0415119251].
Smith, D. The Apartheid City and Beyond: Urbanisation and Social Change in
South Africa. (London: Routledge, 1992) [ISBN 0415076021].
Smith, D.M. Geography and Social Justice. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) [ISBN
0631190260].
Smith, D.M. Geography, Inequality and Society. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987) [ISBN 052126944X].
Smith, D.M. Human Geography: a Welfare Approach. (London: Edward Arnold,
1977) [ISBN 0312399464].
Smith, D.M. Moral Geographies: Ethics in a World of Difference. (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2000) [ISBN 0748612793].
Smith, N. and A. Godlweska (eds) Geography and Empire. (Oxford: Blackwell,
1994) [ISBN 0631193847].
Smith, S. The Politics of ‘Race’ and Residence: Citizenship, Segregation and White
Supremacy in Britain. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989) [ISBN 0745603599].
Soja, E. ‘Postmodern Geographies and the Critique of Historicism’ in Jones III,
J.P., W. Natter and T.R. Schatzki (eds.) Postmodern Contentions: Epochs,
Politics, Space. (New York: Guildford, 1993) [ISBN 0898624959].
Soja, E. ‘The Spatiality of Social Life: Towards a Transformative Retheorization’
in Gregory, D. and J. Urry (eds) Social Relations and Spatial Structures.
(London: St Martins Press, 1985) [ISBN 0312735863].
Soja, E. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996) [ISBN 1557866759].
Stansell, C. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York 1789–1860. (Urbana;
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987) [ISBN 0252014812].
Thrift, N. (ed.) Cultural Geography: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences.
(London: Routledge, 2005) [ISBN 041528502X].
Thrift, N. and P. Williams (eds) Class and Space: the Making of Urban Society.
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987) [ISBN 071020230X].
Thrift, N. ‘Non-representational theory’ in Johnston, R.J., D. Gregory, G.
Blackwell, 2000) fourth edition [ISBN 0631205616]. Please note a new
edition is forthcoming.
Tuan, Yi-Fu, S. Hoelscher and K. Till Space and Place: the Perspective of
Experience. (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) [ISBN
0816638772].
Valentine, G. ‘(Re)Negotiating the Heterosexual Street’ in Duncan, N. (ed.)
Body Space: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality. (London;
New York: Routledge, 1996) [ISBN 0415144418].
Watson, J. Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia. (Stanford: Stanford
Western, J. Outcast Cape Town. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996)
second edition [ISBN 0520207378].
Winchester, H., L. Kong and K. Dunn Landscapes: Ways of Imagining the World.
(Harlow: Pearson Education, 2003) [ISBN 0582288789].
Women and Geography Study Group of the IBG Feminist Geographies:
Explorations of Diversity and Difference. (Harlow: Longman, 1997) [ISBN
0582246369].
Zelinsky, W. Cultural Geography of the United States. (Englewood Cliffs NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1973; revised edition 1996) [ISBN 013194424X].
Zola, E. Au Bonheur Des Dames. (first published 1883; Paris: Classiques
Français, 1994) [ISBN 2877142078]; Ladies’ Paradise. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998) Translated by Brian Nelson [ISBN 0192836021].
8
Introduction
Journals
Barnett, C. ‘The Cultural Turn: Fashion or Progress in Human Geography?’,
Antipode, 30, 1998, pp.379-94.
Bell, D. ‘[****]ing Geography (censor’s version) Editorial’, Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space, 13, 1995, pp.127-31.
Berg, L. ‘Masculinity, Place and a Binary Discourse of “Theory” and “Empirical
Investigation” in the Human Geography of Aotearoa/New Zealand’, Gender,
Place and Culture, 1(2), 1994, pp.245-60.
Blaut, J. ‘The Theory of Cultural Racism’, Antipode, 24, 1992, pp.289-99.
Bondi, L. ‘Gender Symbols and Urban Landscapes’, Progress in Human
Geography, 16(2) 1992, pp.157-70.
Bondi, L. ‘Making connections and thinking through emotions: between
geography and psychotherapy’, Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers, 30, 2005, pp.433-48.
Bondi, L. and M. Domosh ‘On the Contours of Public Space: a Tale of Three
Women’, Antipode, 30(3) 1998, pp.270-89.
Bonnett, A. ‘Constructions of “Race”, Place and Discipline: Geographies of
“Racial” Identity and Racism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 19, 1996, pp.864-
83.
Bonnett, A. ‘Geography, “Race”, and Whiteness: Invisible Traditions and
Current Challenges’, Area, 29, 1997, pp.193-99.
Bowlby, S. ‘Women and the Designed Environment (special issue)’, Built
Environment, 1991, 16.
Brown, M. ‘Closet Geography’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
14, 1996, pp.762-69.
Cohen, S. ‘Sounding out the City: Music and the Sensuous Reproduction of
Place’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 20, 1995, pp.434-
46.
Corbridge, S. ‘Development Ethics: Distance, Difference, Plausibility’, Ethics,
Place and Environment, 1, 1998, pp.35-53.
Corbridge, S. ‘Marxisms, Modernities, and Moralities: Development Praxis and
the Claims of Distant Strangers’, Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space, 11, 1993, pp.449-72.
Cosgrove, D. ‘Orders and a New World: Cultural Geography 1990-91’, Progress
in Human Geography, 16(2) 1992, pp.272-80.
Cosgrove, D. ‘Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea’,
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 10, 1985, pp.45-62.
Cosgrove, D. and P. Jackson ‘New Directions in Cultural Geography’, Area, 19,
1987, pp.95-101.
Dear, M. ‘The Postmodern Challenge: Reconstructing Human Geography’,
Dewsbury, J. ‘Witnessing Space: ‘Knowledge Without Contemplation’,
Environment and Planning A, 35, 2003, pp.1907-932.
Domosh, M. ‘A Method for Interpreting Landscape: a Case Study of the New
York World Building’, Area, 21(4) 1989, pp.347-55.
Domosh, M. ‘An Uneasy Alliance? Tracing the Relations Between Feminist and
Cultural Geographies’, Social and Cultural Geography, 1, 2005, pp.37-41.
Domosh, M. ‘Toward a Feminist Historiography of Geography’, Transactions of
the Institute of British Geographers, 16(1) 1991a, pp.95-104.
Domosh, M. ‘Beyond the Frontiers of Geographical Knowledge’, Transactions of
the Institute of British Geographers, 16(4)1991b, pp.488-90.
Donaghu, M. and R. Barff ‘Nike Just Did It: International Subcontracting,
Flexibility and Athletic Footwear Production’, Regional Studies, 24(6) 1990,
pp.537-52.
Driver, F. ‘Geography’s Empire: Histories of Geographical Knowledge’,
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 10, 1992, pp.23-40.
Duncan, J. ‘The Superorganic in American Cultural Geography’, Annals of the
9
Association of American Geographers, 72, 1980, pp.30-59.

Duncan, J. and N. Duncan ‘(Re)Reading The Landscape’, Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space, 6(2) 1988, pp.117-26.
England, K. ‘Suburban Pink Collar Ghettos: the Spatial Entrapment of
Women?’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 83, 1993,
pp.225-42.
Gregory, D. ‘Between the Book and the Lamp: Imaginative Geographies of
Egypt 1849-50’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 20(1),
1995a, pp.29-57.
Gregory, D. ‘Imaginative Geographies’, Progress in Human Geography, 19,
1995b, pp.447-85.
Gregory, D. and D. Ley ‘Culture’s Geographies’, Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space, 6, 1988, pp.155-56.
Gregson, N. ‘Beyond Boundaries: the Shifting Sands of Social Geography’,
Progress in Human Geography, 16(3) 1992, pp.387-92.
Hayden, D. ‘Two Utopian Feminists and their Campaign for Kitchenless Houses’,
Signs 4(2) 1978, pp.274-90.
Jackson, P. ‘Street Life: the Politics of Carnival’, Environment and Planning D:
Jackson, P. ‘The Cultural Politics of Masculinity: Towards a Social Geography’,
Jackson, P. ‘The Politics of the Street: a Geography of Carribana’, Political
Geography, 11, 1992, pp.130-51.
Jackson, P. et al. ‘Exchange: There’s No Such Thing as Culture?’, Transactions of
the Institute of British Geographers, 21(3) 1996, pp.572-82.
Johnson, J. ‘Housing Desire: a Feminist Geography of Suburban Housing’,
Refractory Girl: a Feminist Journal, 42, 1992, pp.40-47.
Katz, C. ‘Playing the Field: Questions of Fieldwork in Geography’, The
Professional Geographer, 46(1) 1994, pp.67-72.
Kirby, S. and I. Hay ‘(Hetero)Sexing Space: Gay Men And “Straight” Space
in Adelaide, South Australia’, The Professional Geographer, 49(3) 1997,
pp.295-305.
Knopp, L. ‘Sexuality and the Spatial Dynamics of Capitalism’, Environment and
Knopp, L. and M. Lauria ‘Towards an Analysis of the Role of Gay Communities
in the Urban Renaissance’, Urban Geography, 6, 1985, pp.387-410.
Kobayashi, A. and L. Peake ‘Unnatural Discourse: “Race” and Gender in
Geography’, Gender, Place and Culture, 1, 1994, pp.225-43.
Laurie, N. and A. Bonnett ‘Adjusting to Equality: the Contradictions of Neo-
liberalism and the Search for Racial Equality in Peru’, Antipode, 34(1) 2002,
pp.28-53.
Leslie, D. ‘Femininity, Post-Fordism, and the “New Traditionalism”’, Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space, 11, 1993, pp.689-708.
Ley, D. ‘Between Europe and Asia: the Case of the Missing Sequoias’, Ecumene,
2, 1995, pp.185-210.
Lorimer, H. ‘Cultural Geography: the Busyness of Being More-than-
Representational’, Progress in Human Geography, 29(1) 2005, pp.83-94.
Maddrell, A. ‘Discourses of Race and Gender and the Comparative Method in
Geography School Texts, 1830-1918’, Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space, 16, 1998, pp.81-103.
May, J. ‘Globalization and the Politics of Place: Place and Identity in an Inner
London Neighbourhood’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
21(1) 1996, pp.194-215.
May, J. ‘In Search of Authenticity Off and On the Beaten Track’, Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space, 14, 1996, pp.709-36.
May, J. et al. ‘Re-phasing Neo-liberalism: New Labour and Britain’s Crisis in
Street Homelessness’, Antipode, 37(4) 2005, pp.703-30.
10
Introduction
McDowell, L. and G. Court ‘Missing Subjects: Gender, Power and Sexuality in

Merchant Banking’, Economic Geography, 70, 1994, pp.229-51.
McDowell, L. ‘Life Without Father and Ford: the New Gender Order of post-
Fordism’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 16, 1991,
pp.400-16.
Mehrotra, R. ‘One Space, Two Worlds’, Harvard Design Magazine (Winter/
Spring) 1997, pp.25-27.
Merrifield, A. ‘Lefebvre, Anti-Logos and Nietzsche – an Alternative Reading of
The Production of Space’, Antipode, 27(3) 1995, pp.294-303.
Merrifield, A. ‘Place and Space – a Lefebvrian Reconciliation’, Transactions of
Mills, S. ‘Gender and Colonial Space’, Gender, Place and Culture, 3(2) 1996,
pp.125-47.
Mitchell, D. ‘The Annihilation of Space by Law: the Roots and Implications of
Anti-homeless Laws in the United States’, Antipode, 29(3) 1997, pp.303-35.
Mitchell, D. ‘There’s no Such Thing as Culture: Towards a Reconceptualisation
of Culture in Geography’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
20(1) 1995, pp.102-16.
Naga, R. ‘Communal Places and the Politics of Multiple Identities: the Case of
Tanzanian Asians’, Ecumene, 4(1) 1997, pp.3-26.
Peirce, L. ‘Learning from Looking: Geographic and Other Writing about the
American Cultural Landscape’, American Quarterly, 35, 1983, pp.242-61.
Pratt, G. and S. Hanson ‘Gender, Class and Space’, Environment and Planning D:
Price, M. and M. Lewis ‘The Reinvention of Cultural Geography’, Annals of the
Proctor, J.D. ‘Ethics in Geography: Giving Moral Form to the Geographical
Imagination’, Area, 30, 1998, pp.8-18.
Routledge, P. ‘The Third Space as Critical Engagement’, Antipode, 28(4) 1996,
pp.399-419.
Ryan, J. ‘Women, Modernity and the City’, Theory, Culture and Society, 11,
1994, pp.35-63.
Saff, G. ‘The Changing face of the South African City: from Urban Apartheid to
the Deracialization of Space’, International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, 1, 1994, pp.377-91.
Said, E. ‘Narrative, Geography and Interpretation’, New Left Review, 180, 1990,
pp.81-97.
Schein, R. ‘The Place of Landscape: a Conceptual Framework for Interpreting
an American Scene’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers,
87(4) 1997, pp.660-80.
Serageldin, M.I. ‘A Decent Life’, Harvard Design Magazine, (Winter/Spring)
1997, pp.40-41.
Sibley, D. (ed.) ‘Social Exclusion’, Geoforum Special Issue, 29(2) 1998.
Silk, J. ‘Comment on “On the Nature of Explanation in Human Geography”’,
Sismondo, S. ‘Some Social Constructions’, Social Science Studies, 23, 1993,
pp.515-53.
Smith, D.M. ‘How Far Should We Care? On the Spatial Scope of Beneficence’,
Progress in Human Geography, 22, 1998, pp.15-38.
Smith, N. ‘Satanic Geographies of Globalization: Uneven Development in the
1990s’, Public Culture, 10(1) 1997, pp.169-89.
Smith, S. ‘Soundscape’, Area, 26(3) 1994, pp.232-40.
Smith, S. and D. Easterlow ‘The Strange Geography of Health Inequalities’,
Solot, M. ‘Carl Sauer and Cultural Evolution’, Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 76, 1986, pp.508-20.
11
Stoddart, D. ‘Do we Need a Feminist Historiography of Geography and if we do,

What Should It Be?’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 16(4)
1991, pp.484-87.
Takahashi, L. ‘A Decade of Understanding Homelessness in the USA: from
Characterisation to Representation’, Progress in Human Geography, 20(3) 1996,
pp.291-310.
Thrift, N. ‘Literature, the Production of Culture and the Politics of Place’, Antipode,
15, 1983, pp.12-23.
Tuan, Yi-Fu ‘Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective’, Progress in Human
Geography, 6, 1974, pp.211-52.
Valentine, G. ‘(Hetero)sexing Space: Lesbian Perceptions and Experiences of
Everyday Spaces’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 11, 1993,
pp.395-413.
Valentine, G. ‘Creating Transgressive Space: the Music of KD Lang’, Transactions
of the Institute of British Geographers, 20, 1995, pp.474-85.
Valentine, G. ‘Negotiating and Managing Multiple Sexual Identities: Lesbian
Time-Space Strategies’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
18(2) 1993, pp.237-48.
Valentine, G. ‘The Geography of Women’s Fear’, Area, 21(4) 1989, pp.385-90.
Wilton, R. ‘The Constitution of Difference: Space and Psyche in Landscapes of
Exclusion’, Geoforum, 29(2) 1998, pp.173-86.
Yapa, L. ‘The Poverty Discourse and the Poor in Sri Lanka’, Transactions of the
Institute of British Geographers, 23, 1998, pp.95-115.
Yeung, H. ‘Critical Realism and Realist Research in Human Geography: a Method
or a Philosophy in Search of a Method?’, Progress in Human Geography, 21,
1997, pp.51-74.
Online study resources

In addition to the subject guide and the Essential reading, it is crucial that you
take advantage of the study resources that are available online for this course,
including the virtual learning environment (VLE) and the Online Library.
You can access the VLE, the Online Library and your University of London
email account via the Student Portal at: http://my.londoninternational.ac.uk
You should receive your login details in your study pack. If you have not, or
you have forgotten your login details, please email uolia.support@london.
ac.uk quoting your student number.
The VLE
The VLE, which complements this subject guide, has been designed to
enhance your learning experience, providing additional support and a sense
of community. It forms an important part of your study experience with the
University of London and you should access it regularly.
The VLE provides a range of resources for EMFSS courses:
• Self-testing activities: Doing these allows you to test your own
understanding of subject material.
• Electronic study materials: The printed materials that you receive from
the University of London are available to download, including updated
reading lists and references.
• Past examination papers and Examiners’ commentaries: These provide
advice on how each examination question might best be answered.
• A student discussion forum: This is an open space for you to discuss
interests and experiences, seek support from your peers, work
collaboratively to solve problems and discuss subject material.
12
Introduction
• Videos: There are recorded academic introductions to the subject,

interviews and debates and, for some courses, audio-visual tutorials
and conclusions.
• Recorded lectures: For some courses, where appropriate, the sessions
from previous years’ Study Weekends have been recorded and made
available.
• Study skills: Expert advice on preparing for examinations and
developing your digital literacy skills.
• Feedback forms.
Some of these resources are available for certain courses only, but we
are expanding our provision all the time and you should check the VLE
regularly for updates.
Making use of the Online Library

The Online Library contains a huge array of journal articles and other
resources to help you read widely and extensively.
To access the majority of resources via the Online Library you will either
need to use your University of London Student Portal login details, or you
will be required to register and use an Athens login: http://tinyurl.com/
ollathens
The easiest way to locate relevant content and journal articles in the
Online Library is to use the Summon search engine.
If you are having trouble finding an article listed in a reading list, try
removing any punctuation from the title, such as single quotation marks,
question marks and colons.
For further advice, please see the online help pages: www.external.shl.lon.
ac.uk/summon/about.php
Examination advice
Important: the information and advice given in the following section
are based on the examination structure used at the time this guide was
written. Please note that subject guides may be used for several years.
Because of this we strongly advise you always to check both the current
Regulations for relevant information about the examination, and the VLE
where you should be advised of any forthcoming changes. You should also
carefully check the rubric/instructions on the paper you actually sit and
follow those instructions.
This course is assessed by a three-hour unseen written examination.
There is an example of an examination paper at the end of this subject
guide. You will be required to answer three questions from a choice of
ten. The Examiners may set questions on any part of the syllabus, or set
questions which draw together parts of the syllabus.
Examiners’ commentaries, which are available on the VLE, contain
valuable information about how to approach the examination, and so
we strongly advise you to read them carefully. Past examination papers
and the associated reports are valuable resources when preparing for the
examination.
During the examination always remember to allocate a fair share of the
time available to each of the answers you write. Answer the question as
set. Sketch out a plan for your answer before you start writing it, and refer
back to the question as you are writing your answer in order to make sure
13
that you have not wandered from the point. Structure your answer so that
the Examiners can follow your line of argument without difficulty, and
write clearly so that they do not have to waste time trying to decipher your
answers. Finally, read quickly through your answer in order to see that you
have indeed stuck to the theme and have not, in your haste, missed any
essential points.
Remember, it is important to check the VLE for:
• up-to-date information on examination and assessment arrangements
for this course
• where available, past examination papers and Examiners’
commentaries for the course which give advice on how each question
might best be answered.
14
Part 1: Approaching socio-cultural geography
Part 1: Approaching socio-cultural

geography
Part 1 introduces you to the history of both social and cultural geography
and how these two sub-disciplines came together as part of the ‘cultural
turn’ to constitute a ‘new’ cultural geography. You will learn about the
theoretical, conceptual and methodological bases of socio-cultural
geography. You will learn how to analyse ‘texts’ such as landscapes. The
development of ideas on space and place and the crisis of representation
will be shown to be of particular importance in the development of
contemporary socio-cultural geography.
15
Notes
16
Chapter 1: The history of social and cultural geography
Chapter 1: The history of social and

cultural geography
Essential reading
9780415140836] Chapters 1 and 2.
New York: Routledge, 2006) reprinted [ISBN 04150908811] Chapters 1
and 2.
Pain, R. et al. Introducing Social Geographies. (London: Arnold, 2001)
[ISBN 0340720069] Chapter 1.
Further reading
of Wisconsin Press, 1998) new edition [ISBN 0299155145].
Cosgrove, D. ‘Orders and a New World: Cultural Geography 1990-91’, Progress
in Human Geography, 16(2) 1992, pp.272-80.
1987, pp.95-101.
Duncan, J. ‘The Superorganic in American Cultural Geography’, Annals of the
Duncan, J. and N. Duncan ‘(Re)-reading the Landscape’, Environment and
Gregson, N. ‘Beyond Boundaries: the Shifting Sands of Social Geography’,
Progress in Human Geography, 16(3) 1992, pp.387-92.
Groth, P. and T. Bressi (eds) Understanding Ordinary Landscapes. (New Haven;
London: Yale University Press, 1997) [ISBN 0300072031].
[ISBN 0631164766].
Jackson, P. and S. Smith Exploring Social Geography. (Boston: Allen and Unwin,
1984) [ISBN 0043011691].
Jones, E. and J. Eyles An Introduction to Social Geography. (Oxford: Oxford
Ley, D. A Social Geography of the City. (New York: Harper and Row, 1983)
[ISBN 0063848759].
2000) [ISBN 1557868921] Chapter 1.
Norton, W. Cultural Geography. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) [ISBN
0195419227].
Pacione, M. (ed.) Social Geography: Progress and Prospect. (London: Croom
Helm, 1987) [ISBN 0709940262].
Price, M. and M. Lewis ‘The Reinvention of Cultural Geography’, Annals of the
Robinson, G.M. (ed.) A Social Geography of Canada: Essays in Honour of
J. Wreford Watson. (Edinburgh: North British Publishing, 1988) [ISBN
0951377019]. This book is useful in indicating the range of social
geography through a group of essays written in honour of the geographer J.
Wreford Watson.
Zelinsky, W. Cultural Geography of the United States. (Englewood Cliffs NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1973; revised edition 1996) [ISBN 013194424X].
17
Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential readings
and activity, you should be able to:
• discuss the history of social geography
• discuss the history of cultural geography
• outline critiques of both sub-disciplines.
Introduction
Having an understanding of the traditions of both social and cultural
geography is enormously valuable. One of the crucial lessons for you to
learn is that both these traditions have been, and are always, subject to
change and contesting points of view.
The history of social geography (until the 1980s)

Social geography emphasises society as it deals with the geography of
social space, but the approach and content of studies have changed over
time. You can follow the various changes in the content and emphasis of
social geography in your reading, for many of the texts with the title ‘social
geography’ reveal wide differences in content and approach.
There has been little written on the history of social geography. The story
and history of social geography is really about changing conceptions of
the term ‘social’. The birth of social geography, however, can be traced to
the early twentieth century and G.W. Hoke’s The Study of Social Geography
(1907). Hoke was influenced by the style of geography at the time -
geographers then were seen as explorers, and worked within the school of
ideas known as environmental determinism. He argued that social
geography should consider the distribution of social phenomena in space
and describe their significance. In short, he wanted to study the clustering
of social phenomena (e.g. material things like farming practices and
industrial activities) in distinctive places, usually regions. The geographer
could then distinguish different regions from each other according to
their social phenomena. The Le Play group in France, more sociologists
than geographers, analysed the relationships between the geographical
environment, the family and work. Indeed, for some geographers ‘social
geography’ has remained a subject on the border between geography and
sociology. The term ‘social geography’ has also been used as a synonym for
‘human geography’.
It wasn’t until much later that social geography included a much richer
notion of the social. From the end of the 1940s and into the 1950s,
an independent social geography is recognisable. This period saw
an enormous expansion in geographical thinking. The extension of
geographical thinking meant that the whole of human geography could
not be encompassed as a course for research and study except at a very
elementary level. Subdivisions needed to be made in terms of some
unifying principle in order to maintain a sense of scholarly discipline:
hence political geography, economic geography, urban geography, etc.
Although some of these subdivisions of human geography are more
easily defined than social geography, their content is not rigidly outlined.
After all, politics and economics are forms of social activity: Karl Marx,
for example, emphasised economics as the main social determinant. In
1951 Wreford Watson wrote a paper called the ‘Sociological Aspects of
Geography’ - Watson wanted to consider the immaterial features that
18
gave a region its personality, for example, human ideologies. He said that
social geography should be confined to studying patterns of population,
settlement and social institutions such as religion, race, language, etc. He
considered the constraints that impacted on the space of social groups due
to poverty, respectability, etc. His ideas fed into later work in geography on
mental maps, place images, geographical perception, etc.
In the 1960s and 1970s social geography became associated with
radicalism, especially the emergence of Marxist geography (see David
Harvey’s 1973 Social Justice and the City) in which the emphasis was on
social inequality. Later social geography was associated with humanistic
geography (see David Ley’s 1983 A Social Geography of the City) in which
the emphasis was on human subjectivity and the patterns of social groups
in space, and how they make and change those patterns.
In the late 1980s social geographers began to consider social stratification
and the distribution of social power in more complex ways. Rather than
taking categories like race, gender and ethnicity for granted, they began
to explore the material and ideological ways in which these categories are
socially constructed and the inequalities between different radicalised and
gendered groups. This concern with the social and cultural complexion
of social space and spatial categories is the key insight of the so-called
‘cultural turn’ (see Chapter 2).
The history of cultural geography (until the 1980s)

Cultural geography began quite separately and differently as a sub-
discipline interested in the physical expression of culture in the landscape.
It has its roots in the USA in the work and ideas of one man - Carl
Sauer - and a particular school - the Berkeley School. Sauer researched
the physical aspects of culture as expressed in the ‘cultural landscape’.
He argued that the geographer’s best training was through fieldwork,
developing the skills of observation. His ideas reflect his own socialisation.
He was of German ancestry and he derived his perspective on landscape
from the German classics, such as Goethe’s romantic conception of
morphological change, a perspective that looked at both form and process.
Sauer presented his ideas in a 1925 paper entitled ‘The Morphology
of Landscape’. This paper asserted landscape as the core concept of
geography. Sauer defined landscape as ‘a peculiarly geographical
association of facts’. He used landscape to think about culture - which
he saw as the imprints of humans upon an area (for example, he argued
that the USA’s border with Mexico was a cultural rather than a physical
border). The ‘cultural landscape’ was moulded from the natural landscape
by a cultural group. He wrote: ‘culture is the agent, the natural area is
the medium, the cultural landscape the result’. We can see that Sauer
gave culture, not individual people, control over landscape. As a result,
all attention was diverted from the social to the natural and physical
environment. He was much less interested in social theory and social
welfare than social geographers. Geography for Sauer was based on the
reality of the union of the physical and cultural elements in the ‘landscape’.
It was a discipline that studied landscape in its natural and cultural forms
(read Crang, 1998, and Jackson, 2006).
Sauer defined human agency as the capacity of humans to change the
natural environment. Yet he tended to concentrate on the physical and
biological processes set off by human actions rather than on the social
processes themselves. He saw the natural environment as deformed and
appropriated by humans, and stood against the exploitation of the earth’s
19
resources.
Culture for Sauer was about custom and tradition - thus he worked on
rural and folk themes. He hated modernity and loved the past. He saw the
industrial world as eradicating the cultural landmarks which he cherished.
His American cultural roots were in the Mid-western soil. Cities to Sauer
were an offence against the rural: cities were, he wrote, full of ‘masses
of people running about, making unnecessary noises, gobbling sweets
and chocolate drinks, dragging their wet and smelly infants about’. Cities
were civilisation’s ‘garbage’. Modern society for Sauer was anti-historical
and anti-geographical. Basically he was reacting against the American
melting pot, in which all the immigrant cultures became one big culture
- American culture. The answer to all this, for Sauer, was a return to the
cultural as an academic tradition.
Sauer’s interest in rural culture, then, was a highly personal one.
He thought that rural Americans were near to primitive. As a result,
fieldwork for him had to be rural in nature; indeed, Sauer influenced
the construction of geography as a discipline focused around fieldwork.
Fieldwork for Sauer was a return to tradition in the face of modernisation.
He disliked geographers who just did ‘desk work’. The geographer’s
knowledge of an area through fieldwork, Sauer argued, came from a much
baser and - therefore more authentic - experience, involving physical
discomforts and pleasures, ‘muscular, cutaneous and gastric’.
Sauer was influenced by cultural anthropology and its definition of
culture. Culture for Sauer and for the anthropologists he admired was
about patterns of behaviour transmitted by symbols. These behaviours
were reflected in artefacts - material culture. Culture was seen as super-
organic; by this I mean that culture was seen as an entity at a higher level
than the person, it was seen to have a logic of its own and to constrain
human behaviour (read Duncan, 1980). In short, Sauer and the Berkeley
School described the culture, not the individuals who participated in it.
For Sauer culture was not driven by historical and socio-economic forces,
nor by human agency. Culture itself was the driver. This perspective gave
culture powers, rather than people or individuals.
Basing their study of culture on a notion of culture as a super-organic
entity, cultural geographers such as these did not manage to address the
social context in which cultures are constructed and expressed. This kind
of cultural geography was practised up until the 1960s. Elements of it
remain today, especially in more traditional geography departments in
the USA (read Groth and Bressi, 1997). By the 1970s, most geographical
experts dismissed Sauer’s style of cultural geography as merely ‘the
geography of artefacts’. Cosgrove and Jackson criticised Sauer for being
concerned mainly with ‘the rural and antiquarian, narrowly focused on
physical artefact…’ (1987, p.96). They also criticised the unitary view of
culture in favour of a constantly negotiated and constituted plurality of
cultures. They argued for a ‘revitalized cultural geography’ that would
recognise that ‘particular cultural forms can be related to specific material
circumstances in particular localities’ (p.99). They also argued that
cultures should be seen as politically contested and landscape as culturally
constructed.
The joining of social and cultural geography, to which we now turn,
demanded the rejection of a super-organic culture in favour of a more
sociological approach.
20
Activity
Use Sauer’s conceptualisation of ‘cultural landscape’ (a landscape moulded from the
natural landscape by a cultural group) to think about the imprint of human cultures in
your own country or part of your own country. Does this conceptualisation address the
social context in which cultures are constructed and expressed?
A reminder of your learning outcomes

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential readings and activity, you
should be able to:
• discuss the history of social geography
• discuss the history of cultural geography
• outline critiques of both sub-disciplines.
Sample examination questions

1. The histories of social and cultural geography have been quite separate.
Discuss.
2. Carl Sauer’s cultural geography can be dismissed as the ‘mere
geography of artefacts’. Discuss.
3. Discuss the impact of Marxism on social geography.
4. Discuss the impact of humanism on social geography.
21
Notes
22
Chapter 2: The cultural turn
Essential reading
Anderson, K. and F. Gale (eds) Cultural Geographies. (Australia: Longman,
1999) second edition [ISBN 0582810868] Chapter 1.
9780415140836] Chapters 1 and 2.
New York: Routledge, 2006) reprinted [ISBN 04150908811] Chapter 1.
Pain, R. et al. Introducing Social Geographies. (London: Arnold, 2001)
[ISBN 0340720069] Chapter 1.
Further reading
Barnett, C. ‘The Cultural Turn: Fashion or Progress in Human Geography?’,
Antipode, 30, 1998, pp.379-94.
Cloke, P. ‘Cultural Turn’ in Johnston, R., D. Gregory, G. Pratt and M. Watts
(eds) The Dictionary of Human Geography. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) [ISBN
0631205616] pp.141-43.
Cook, I., D. Crouch, S. Naylor and J. Ryan (eds) Cultural Turns/Geographical
Turns: Perspectives on Cultural Geography. (Singapore: Prentice Hall, 2000)
[ISBN 0582368871].
of Wisconsin Press, 1998; original edition 1984) [ISBN 0299155145].
Cosgrove, D. and Daniels, S. (eds) The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the
Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988) [ISBN 0521389151].
1987, pp.95-101.
Geertz, C. The Interpretation of Cultures. (New York: Basic Books, 2000; original
edition 1973) [ISBN 0465097197].
Gregory, D. and D. Ley ‘Culture’s Geographies’, Environment and Planning D:
Jackson, P. et al. ‘Exchange: There’s No Such Thing as Culture?’, Transactions of
Kobayashi, A. and S. MacKenzie (eds) Remaking Human Geography. (London:
Unwin Hyman, 1989) [ISBN 0044453256].
2000) [ISBN 1557868921] Chapters 1 and 2.
Mitchell, D. ‘There’s No Such Thing as Culture: Towards a Reconceptualisation
of Culture in Geography’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
20(1) 1995, pp.102-116.
Panelli, R. Social Geographies: from Difference to Action. (London: Sage, 2004)
[ISBN 0761968946].
Philo, C. (ed) New Words, New Worlds: Reconceptualising Social and Cultural
Geography. (Proceedings of a conference organised by the ‘Social and
Cultural Geography Study Group’ of the Institute of British Geographers,
1991) [ISBN 0905285328].
Sismondo, S. ‘Some Social Constructions,’ Social Science Studies, 23, 1993,
pp.515-53.
Solot, M. ‘Carl Sauer and Cultural Evolution’, Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 76 1986, pp.508-20.
Thrift, N. (ed.) Cultural Geography: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences.
(London: Routledge, 2005) [ISBN 041528502X].
23
Learning outcomes
• outline the coming together of social and cultural geography through
the ‘cultural turn’
• define what geographers now mean by the term ‘social’
• define what geographers now mean by the term ‘cultural’.
Introduction
Some geographers view the ‘cultural turn’ as the most important
intellectual awakening in human geography in the last decade or so of the
twentieth century. It is important in this course because it pinpoints the
time when social and cultural geography came together in recognition of,
and to counter, their own sub-disciplinary weaknesses.
The reconceptualisation of social and cultural geography

In the late 1980s social geography experienced a ‘cultural turn’ (see
Mitchell, 2000). Social geographers argued that human geography should
celebrate the cultural diversity in the world and pay particular attention to
human beliefs, values and ideals, those things that continuously shape its
landscapes.
Some social geographers believed that certain things had been missing
from human geography: a sense of history and of human agency as a
collective expression of real people, with imagination, desires, ideas,
beliefs and values. These are all features that can be caught under the
umbrella of the term ‘culture’.
In reconceptualising social geography, the ‘new’ socio-cultural geographers
didn’t just want to use the term ‘culture’ to refer to groups of people (like
Carl Sauer did), but to think of culture at a smaller spatial scale; that is,
that of the person - the construction of the self and the subjectivity of the
self - the thinking, feeling and dreaming human person and body. As a
result of this, the process of cultural signification and meaning-making
became important; that is, people’s identities (politics and moralities) and
geographies (positions in space and attachments to place).
The aim became to put the social and the cultural together to aid
understanding of the processes and experiences of social stratification, to
think about social categorisation and social inequality, at the same time as
thinking about the negotiation and expression of culture. In other words,
the aim was to link social categorisation and cultural mobilisation.
Rethinking the social

The definition of ‘social’ became one of social relations in space and the
spatial structures that lie underneath those relations. That is, it became
the study of social differentiation, inequalities and injustices in the spatial
configuration of people, wealth, resources and welfare provisions, and so
on. If we study social relations, we study different social groups such as
class groups, ethnic/racial/national groups, gendered groups, and so on.
The new blend of socio-cultural geography also took on board the notion
of social construction (from social constructivism; see Sismondo, 1993).
Put simply, social construction means that we can only understand
24
something through the meaning that we as humans give to it; it is both

reality and fiction in one. Take nature, for example. Nature is a physical
or natural reality, yet it is also a social construction, something that we
can only understand through the meaning that society (and this includes
cultural groups, men and women, etc.) gives to it.
Rethinking the cultural

Geographers now think of culture as shared codes of understanding,
communication and practice that produce the basis for human thought
and action. Culture is a dynamic mix of symbols, beliefs, languages and
practices through which people create a system of shared meaning. There
is more often than not a contest between these different shared meanings.
Anderson and Gale (1999) argue that:
...the cultural process by which people construct their
understandings of the world is an inherently geographic concern.
In the course of generating new meanings and decoding existing
ones, people construct spaces, places, landscapes, regions and
environments. In short, they construct geographies.
In constructing cultures, therefore, people construct geographies.
They arrange spaces in distinctive ways; they fashion certain types
of landscape, townscape and streetscape; they erect monuments
and destroy others; they evaluate spaces and places and they
adapt them accordingly; they organise the relations between
territories at a range of scales from the local to the international.
In direct and indirect ways, both wilful and unintentional, people
construct environments, regions and places.
Activity
In the light of the two quotes above from Anderson and Gale and your readings, choose a
monument in your own country and write an essay on its social and cultural construction.

should be able to:
• outline the coming together of social and cultural geography through
the ‘cultural turn’
• define what geographers now mean by the term ‘social’
• define what geographers now mean by the term ‘cultural’.

1. The joining of social and cultural geography demanded the rejection
of a super-organic culture in favour of a more sociological approach.
Discuss.
2. The ‘cultural turn’ has produced a more critical cultural geography than
that undertaken by Carl Sauer and the Berkeley School. Discuss.
3. How do contemporary cultural geographers conceptualise culture?
4. What is the difference between ‘social differentiation’ and ‘social
construction’?
25
Notes
26
Chapter 3: Space and place
Essential reading
9780415140836] Chapter 7.
Valentine, G. Social Geographies: Space and Society. (Harlow: Prentice Hall,
2001) [ISBN 0582357772] Chapter 1.
Further reading
Bird, J., B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson and L. Tickner (eds) Mapping the
Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change. (London: Routledge, 1993) [ISBN
041507018X] Chapters 1-5.
Bunge, W. Theoretical Geography. (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1966)
[ISBN 9140024563].
Buttimer, A. and D. Seamon (eds) The Human Experience of Space and Place.
(London: Croom Helm, 1980) [ISBN 0709903200].
Cloke, P., C. Philo and D. Sadler Approaching Human Geography: an Introduction
to Contemporary Theoretical Debates. (London: Sage, 2007) reprinted [ISBN
0761944850] Chapter 2.
Cohen, S. ‘Sounding out the City: Music and the Sensuous Reproduction of
Place’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 20, 1995,
pp.434-46.
England, K. ‘Suburban Pink Collar Ghettos: the Spatial Entrapment of Women?’,
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 83, 1993, pp.22–42.
Gregory, D. ‘Space, human geography and,’ in Johnston, R., D. Gregory, G.
Blackwell, 2000) [ISBN 0631205616] pp.767-73.
Gregory, D. ‘A History of Space’ in his Geographical Imaginations. (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1994) [ISBN 0631183310].
Gregory, D. and J. Urry (eds) Social Relations and Spatial Structure.
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985) [ISBN 0333354044].
Haggett, P. Locational Analysis in Human Geography. (London: Edward Arnold,
1965) [ISBN 0312494203].
[ISBN 0631164766].
Hubbard, P., R. Kitchin and G. Valentine Key Thinkers on Space and Place.
(London: Sage, 2004) [ISBN 0761949631].
Jackson, P. ‘The Politics of the Street: a Geography of Carribana’, Political
Geography, 11, 1992, pp.130-51.
Johnston, R. A Question of Place: Exploring the Practice of Human Geography.
Massey, D. Space, Place and Gender. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1994) [ISBN 0816626170].
Massey, D. ‘A Global Sense of Place’ in Barnes, T. and D. Gregory (eds) Reading
Human Geography: the Poetics and Politics of Inquiry. (London: Arnold,
1997) [ISBN 0470235373]. Also found in Marxism Today, June 1991,
pp.24-29.
Massey, D. Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of
Production. (London: Routledge, 1998) second edition [ISBN 0415912962].
May, J. ‘Globalization and the Politics of Place: Place and Identity in an Inner
London Neighbourhood’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
21(1) 1996, pp.194-215.
McDowell, L. (ed.) Undoing Place? A Geographical Reader. (London: Arnold,
1997) [ISBN 0340677465].
27
Merrifield, A. ‘Lefebvre, Anti-Logos and Nietzsche – an Alternative Reading of

The Production of Space,’ Antipode, 27(3) 1995, pp.294-303.
Merrifield, A. ‘Place and Space – a Lefebvrian Reconciliation’, Transactions of
Routledge, P. ‘The Third Space as Critical Engagement’, Antipode, 28(4) 1996,
pp.399-419.
Tuan, Yi-Fu, S. Hoelscher and K. Till Space and Place: the Perspective of
Experience. (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) [ISBN
0816638772].
Tuan, Yi-Fu ‘Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective’, Progress in Human
Geography, 6, 1974, pp.211-52.
Shields, R. Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. (London:
Routledge, 1991) [ISBN 0415080223].
Soja, E. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996) [ISBN 1557866759].
Soja, E. ‘The Spatiality of Social Life: Towards a Transformative Retheorization’
in Gregory, D. and J. Urry (eds) Social Relations and Spatial Structures.
(London: St Martins Press, 1985) [ISBN 0312735863].
Thrift, N. and P. Williams (eds) Class and Space: the Making of Urban Society.
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987) [ISBN 071020230X].
Thrift, N. ‘Literature, the Production of Culture and the Politics of Place’,
Antipode, 15, 1983, pp.12-23.
Valentine, G. ‘The Geography of Women’s Fear’, Area, 21(4) 1989, pp.385-90.
Wilton, R. ‘The Constitution of Difference: Space and Psyche in Landscapes of
Exclusion’, Geoforum, 29(2) 1998, pp.173-86.
Learning outcomes
• outline the development of notions of ‘space’ in geography
• outline the development of notions of ‘place’ in geography
• discuss how notions of ‘space’ and ‘place’ are interrelated in geography.
Introduction
Space and, within it, place are central concerns in socio-cultural
geography. Notions of both have become more sophisticated over time.
Space
The central focus of geography is the study of space or spatiality.
Geography is a spatial science. By ‘space’ we mean the presumed effect
of location, or where social processes are taking place. The progression
of ideas on space in geography begins with ideas on physical or material
space and moves towards ideas on socially constructed space, and then on
to abstract or mental space.
Perhaps the most obvious way to think about space is as absolute, as
a distinct physical reality. Objects exist in space, they have a location
in space. To get from one object to another in space, or to bring them
together, we must exert energy. Locating objects in absolute space was
the obsession of early explorers, surveyors and map-makers, for it had an
economic and social value. Knowing where a place was by longitude and
latitude on the surface of the globe was important to the development of
trade and in asserting political control.
28
In contrast we have relative space, in which space is the relative placement

of objects to other objects. It is not about their absolute location. In the
1960s British and American geographers used this approach to space in
geography by researching the spatial patterns of towns, industries, and so
on. For examples, see Bunge’s Theoretical Geography (1966) and Haggett’s
Locational Analysis in Human Geography (1965). They looked at spatial
patterns and developed models to predict changes in social patterns - for
example, models of diffusion, etc. They looked to economic and social
theories to explain changes in patterns. Space for them was a blank
surface on which patterns created by non-spatial processes were inscribed.
The social and cultural construction of space

During the 1970s geographers were interested in analysing the social
and economic processes involved in the production and continuation of
inequality. They looked at how groups controlled or operated within space.
Their work showed that space was relational, that the significance of a
location in space is not its absolute location, nor its location relative to
other locations, but from the content of the social and economic processes
that link it to, or separate it from, other locations. Here space and
relationships in space were seen as socially produced and part of social
processes. Space was then formed by human actions, but also by their
understandings and conception of space. Space was seen to be a social
construction.
The important question according to geographer David Harvey in his
1973 Social Justice and the City, was not ‘what is space?’ but rather ‘how
is it that different human practices create and make use of distinctive
conceptualisations of space?’. In other words, how is space socially and
culturally constructed? There was an interest in scale (referring to spatial
level, e.g. local, national or global) and spatial structure (referring to the
mode in which space is organised by and implicated in the operation and
outcome of social processes).
During the 1980s the notion that space was a social construction was
widely accepted, so that in 1985 Edward Soja used the term ‘spatiality’ to
refer to socially produced and interpreted space. As a result, in the 1980s
and 1990s geographical work on space moved on to consider metaphorical
space, looking at spatial metaphors such as ‘social location’ and ‘theoretical
space’. We talk of ‘mapping out’ an essay, ‘mapping out’ our futures, of
personal ‘boundaries’. Space is an integral part of social life. Space as such
is open to contestation from different groups who want to redefine the
meaning and boundaries of a particular space.
The analysis of space in geography now focuses less on its abstract
geometries and more on the social relations of class, gender, race, etc.,
which are inscribed in (and in part constituted through) spaces and places,
regions and landscapes.
New approaches to space

Towards the end of the twentieth century work in geography became
interested in other spaces. In his book Third Space: Journeys to Los Angeles
and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (1996), based on Henri Lefebvre’s
work on the production of space, Edward Soja made us think differently
about space and those concepts that make up the spatiality of human life.
These concepts include place, location, locality, landscape, environment,
home, city, region, territory and geography. Soja argues that we need to
keep our notions of space open to redefinition and expansion. He adopted
the term ‘thirdspace’ to indicate new ways of thinking about space. He
29
argued that generally people understand the world as an historical and

social project and that they ignore spatiality, because space has been seen
as a passive agent and time as an active agent. Historically, spatiality has
been muted or perceived as of lesser importance, as some kind of site or
environment in the background that can be taken for granted. Soja argues
instead that the nature of human existence is made known to us through
what he calls the ‘trialectics of being’: spatiality (or the production of
space), historicality (or time) and sociality (or being-in-the-world). Space,
he asserts, is not passive but active in human existence.
Space, Soja argues, has been conceived of as either real (that is, physical
or material) or imagined (that is, mental or abstract or ideational). It
has been thought about in binary terms linked to other dualisms such
as observable versus hidden, body versus spirit or mind, actions versus
words, etc. In Third Space he argues that we should break these binaries
and should problematise the distinction between real and imagined space,
so that the two come together as a third space. It is really a call for a
deeper appreciation of the spatiality of human life.
For Soja ‘third space’ is a space in-between, a space of openness, a
hybrid space, a difficult and risky space on the edge, a space filled with
contradictions and ambiguities, perils and new possibilities. Examples of
third spaces include margins, peripheries, borderlands, and so on.
Place
Place, like space, is a core concept in geography. Place is a portion
of geographical space occupied by a person or a thing. Place is a
representation of space!
In early geographies, writings on place were writings on physically defined
regions. Geographers documented human and physical geography
characteristics, looking for a region’s unique identities. This tradition was
rooted in the writings of the German Carl Ritter and French regionalist
Vidal de la Blache. Here places were rooted and bounded in physical
locations and had a fixed set of economic and social characteristics.
Humanistic geography on place

In the 1970s humanistic geographers looked at place and rejected notions
of space as either absolute or relative. They thought that none of this work
captured the human experience of living in those spaces. They saw places
as spaces given meaning by human feelings - spaces/places such as the
home, neighbourhood, etc. Yi-Fu Tuan (1974) argued that a sense of place
was part of what it meant to be human. For humanistic geographers place
was associated with human identity. The problem with this early work was
that geographers assumed that we would all feel the same about certain
aspects of a place; for example, that the home would bring up feelings
of nurturing and warmth for all people. The ‘cultural turn’ in geography
sought to mitigate this lack of attention to difference.
The ‘cultural turn’ on place

More recently geographers have looked at the ways in which the meanings
through which places are constructed are tied into social identities and
struggles. People invest places with social power. In his book Maps of
Meaning (1989, reprinted 2006), Peter Jackson argued that people have
‘cultural maps of meaning’ which they use to make sense of places.
Cultural geographers argue that dominant senses of place are the result
of meanings given to places by powerful institutions, for example, tourist
30
boards, etc. Places are used as symbols in contemporary culture. People

often contest these senses of place. For example, European explorers
justified their own presence in other places by ‘othering’ (see Chapter
6) as uncivilised, countries such as India, and regarding Europe as the
harbinger of civilisation. Post-colonial theorists are now studying this
social construction of place in geography, as we shall see later.
Geographers have moved on to look at place in a different way from those
early geographers who looked for the uniqueness of, and differences
between, regions. For example, some have started with the premise that
because of globalisation, all places are becoming the same, rather than
assuming that all places are different. They now ask the question: how
should we think about place in these global times?
The development of the concept of place in geography can be traced
through Doreen Massey’s writings. In her Spatial Divisions of Labour
(1984) she argued that place is fluid, historically specific and socially
constructed. More recently in Space, Place and Gender (1994) she argues
that place should be seen as a ‘progressive sense of place’, that place is
the intersection of sets of social relations over particular spaces and the
connections they make to elsewhere.
In conclusion, place and space are both social constructs which are
culturally mediated and intermeshed. The difference between them is that
place is a representation of space.
Activity
Write down what ‘cultural maps of meaning’ you would use to make sense of London,
England; Bombay, India or Bangkok, Thailand.

should be able to:
• outline the development of notions of ‘space’ in geography
• outline the development of notions of ‘place’ in geography
• discuss how notions of ‘space’ and ‘place’ are interrelated in geography.

1. Space and place are the same. Discuss.
2. Outline Edward Soja’s concept of spatiality. How useful has this been
for geographical analyses of space?
3. Peter Jackson argues that people have ‘cultural maps of meaning’. What
are these and what do people use them for?
4. What is a ‘third space’ as outlined in Edward Soja’s writings on
spatiality?
31
Notes
32

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Space and culture

University of London International Programmes

Published by: University of London

The crisis of representation........................................................................................... 35

The so-called ‘cultural turn’ in geography brought about new ways of

Aims of the course

Part 2 draws on the conceptual, theoretical and methodological

How to use this subject guide

Dictionaries and handbooks

Johnston, R.J., D. Gregory, G. Pratt and M. Watts (eds) The Dictionary of

Blunt, A., P. Gruffud, J. May, M. Ogborn and D. Pinder Cultural Geography in

Duncan, J. The City as Text: the Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the

Kipling, R. Kim. (London: Viking Press, 1992) reissue edition

Pawson, E. ‘Postcolonial New Zealand?’ in Anderson, K. and F. Gale, (eds)

Shields, R. Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. (London:

Association of American Geographers, 72, 1980, pp.30-59.

McDowell, L. and G. Court ‘Missing Subjects: Gender, Power and Sexuality in

Stoddart, D. ‘Do we Need a Feminist Historiography of Geography and if we do,

Online study resources

• Videos: There are recorded academic introductions to the subject,

Making use of the Online Library

Part 1: Approaching socio-cultural

Chapter 1: The history of social and

The history of social geography (until the 1980s)

The history of cultural geography (until the 1980s)

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Sample examination questions

Chapter 2: The cultural turn

The reconceptualisation of social and cultural geography

Rethinking the social

something through the meaning that we as humans give to it; it is both

Rethinking the cultural

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Sample examination questions

Chapter 3: Space and place

Merrifield, A. ‘Lefebvre, Anti-Logos and Nietzsche – an Alternative Reading of

In contrast we have relative space, in which space is the relative placement

The social and cultural construction of space

New approaches to space

argued that generally people understand the world as an historical and

Humanistic geography on place

The ‘cultural turn’ on place

boards, etc. Places are used as symbols in contemporary culture. People

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Sample examination questions

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