Geography 6742
Seminar in Cultural Geography
Spring Semester, 2009
Wednesdays 3:00 – 5:50 Guggenheim 201e
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_6742_s09/
updated 3/12/09
Oakes details
Email: toakes@colorado.edu
Web page: http://spot.colorado.edu/~toakes/
Phone: 3/ 492 8310
Office: Guggenheim 108
Office hours: Thursdays 11-2
This seminar offers an overview to the field of cultural geography, examines debates and developments concerning the two key concepts of place and landscape, and explores in greater detail my own area of research interest in cultural economy and related topics of cultural governance, development, themed landscapes and place-branding. The course recognizes from the outset that cultural geography remains notoriously difficult to define or characterize in any coherent way. Cultural geography is treated here as a loose assemblage of conceptions, methods, theories, and politics reflecting an array of understandings of both culture and geography. Generally, my approach is to consider two dominant modes of inquiry in cultural geography, one broadly materialist with an orientation toward social constructivism, and the other broadly humanist with an orientation toward phenomenology, existentialism, and being. The former orientation emphasizes questions of epistemology while the latter emphasizes questions of ontology. While I do not regard these as mutually exclusive frameworks for examining human and social phenomena, they have formed the dominant centers of gravity around which critical debates within the field have developed.
We will read four books in their entirety:
All other readings are available online, either via Norlin e-reserve (indicated by an asterisk and found at http://libraries.colorado.edu/search/p) or via Chinook http://libraries.colorado.edu.
Requirements
Being there: The expectation of regular attendance, preparation for and complete participation in all meetings goes without saying. This doesn’t mean you have to be a blabbermouth. It is everyone’s responsibility to ensure a meeting environment in which all voices are encouraged, heard, and respected.
Facilitating: Everyone is expected to facilitate the discussion for one meeting (see below).
Writing: The primary product of the seminar is your research essay, 20-30 pages in length (8,000-10,000 words). It is expected that this paper will be submitted to a journal of your choice for publication consideration. Extended abstracts and bibliographies for the paper will be due 3/18. Final papers will be due 4/29. I will be scheduling mandatory meetings during early March in which we will discuss your paper topic, resources, and strategies for publication.
In addition to the research paper, you will also have a ‘mid-term’ exam of sorts. This will be a single essay question written in the style of a comprehensive exam question you might expect in the field of cultural geography. This will occur during the week of 3/18 (but not during class).
Facilitators
Each week’s topic will have a designated facilitator. Facilitating involves three separate responsibilities. 1) Write a brief discussion paper (see below) on the week’s readings, to be circulated no later than 3:00 PM on the Monday prior to class. 2) Facilitate discussion during the meeting. 3) Write a brief follow-up to be circulated no later than 6:00 PM on the Friday following class.
Discussion papers
Your discussion paper should do several things:
Grades
Facilitating: 25%
Writing:
Comp Question 20%
Research Paper 55%
Additional Resources
The following collections of essays on Cultural Geography may be helpful, in your facilitation assignments. Lists of additional readings may also appear on updated versions of the course webpage.
Anderson, Kay and Fay Gale (eds.) Inventing Places; studies in
cultural geography. (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1992).
Anderson, Kay, Mona Domosh, Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift (eds.). Handbook of Cultural Geography (
Amin, Ash and Nigel Thrift (eds.). The
Blackwell Cultural Economy Reader (
Anheier, Helmut and Yudhishthir Raj Isar (eds.). The Cultural Economy (
Atkinson, David, Peter Jackson, David Sibley, and Neil Washbourne
(eds.). Cultural Geography: A Critical
Dictionary of Key Concepts (
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies:
Theory and Practice (
Blunt, Alison, et al. (eds.). Cultural
Geography in Practice (
Crang, Mike. Cultural Geography
(
Duncan, James, Nuala Johnson, and Richard Schein (eds.). A Companion to Cultural Geography (
Foote, Kenneth., Peter Hugill, Kent Mathewson, and Jonathan Smith
(eds.). Re-Reading Cultural Geography. (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1994).
Hubbard, Phil, Rob Kitchen and Gill Valentine (eds.). Key Thinkers on Space and Place (
Mikesell, Marvin and Philip Wagner (eds.).
Oakes, Timothy and Patricia Price (eds.). The Cultural Geography Reader (
Shurmer-Smith, Pamela
(ed.). Doing Cultural Geography (
Thrift, Nigel and Sarah Whatmore (eds.). Cultural Geography: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences. Volumes 1 & 2 (
Schedule of
topics and readings (Weekly facilitators identified in Red)
DEFINING THE FIELD
1/14 Overview – A Transatlantic Genealogy
1/21 The Sauerian Legacy (Tim)
*C. Sauer, “The Morphology of Landscape” from:
C.
Sauer, C. “Forward to historical geography.” Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 31:1 (1941): 1-24.
M.
Mikesell, “Tradition and innovation in cultural geography.” Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 63:1 (1978): 1-16.
*W. Zelinsky, “Process,” Chapter 3 from: The
Cultural Geography of the
J. Parsons, “Geography as
exploration and discovery.” Annals of the Association of American
Geographers 67:1 (1977): 1-16.
Additional resources
M. Kenzer (“Milieu and the
‘intellectual landscape’: Carl O. Sauer’s undergraduate heritage,” Annals of the Association of American
Geographers 75:2 (1985)
D. Livingstone, The
Geographical Tradition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
T. Oakes, “Place and the
Paradox of Modernity,” Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 87:3 (1997).
C. Sauer, Land and Life, ed. J. Leighly (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1963).
M. Williams, “‘The apple of
my eye’: Carl Sauer and historical geography,” The Journal of Historical Geography 9:1 (1983).
1/28 The Cultural Turn (Ken Foote)
*C. Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive
Theory of Culture,” pp. 3-30 in C. Geertz, The
Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973).
J. Duncan, “The superorganic in American cultural
geography.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 79:2
(1980): 181-198.
*D. Cosgrove & P. Jackson, “New directions in
cultural geography,” Area 19:2
(1987): 95-101.
*J. Duncan, “After the civil war: reconstructing
cultural geography as heterotopia,” in K. Foote et al. (eds.), Re-Reading Cultural Geography (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1994), pp. 401-408.
Additional
resources
L. Abu-Lughod, "Writing against culture," in
R. Fox (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology:
Working in the Present (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press,
1991), pp. 137-162.
C. Barnett, “The cultural turn: fashion or progress in
human geography?” Antipode 30:4 (1998): 379-394.
D. Cosgrove, “Towards a radical cultural geography:
problems of theory. Antipode 15:1
(1983), 1-11.
S. Hall, “New cultures for old,” in D. Massy and P.
Jess, eds.,
P. Jackson, “The heritage of cultural geography,” in Maps of Meaning (Boston: Unwin Hyman,
1989), pp. 9-24.
D. Matless, “Culture run riot? Work in social and cultural geography, 1994.”
Progress in Human Geography 19:3 (1995): 395-403.
M. Price & M. Lewis,
“The reinvention of cultural geography,” Annals
of the Association of American Geographers 83:1 (1993)
W. H. Sewell, "The concept(s) of culture,"
in V. Bonnell and L. Hunt, eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in
the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1999): 35-61.
N. Thrift, “Literature, the production of culture, and
the politics of place.” Antipode 15:1(1983), 12-23.
2/4 Cultural
Materialism (Adam Williams, with a guest appearance by
Joe Bryan)
*E.P. Thompson, “The rituals of mutuality” and
“Myriads of eternity” from The Making of
the English Working Class, pp. 418-429 and 444-447.
*R. Williams, “Culture,” and selections from “Cultural
Theory” in Marxism and Literature,
pp. 11-20 and 75-135.
*H. G. Klaus, "Cultural materialism: a summary of principles," in Raymond
Williams: Politics, Education, Letters.
J. Morgan and P. Preston (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993): 88-104.
*P. Jackson, “Culture & Ideology,” Chapter 3 from Maps of Meaning (London: Unwin Hyman,
1989), pp. 47-75.
Additional
resources
K. Anderson, “Cultural hegemony and the race
definition process in Chinatown,
C. Barker, Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice
(
P. Glennie & N. Thrift, “Reworking E. P.
Thompson's ‘Time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism'” Time & Society 5:3 (1996).
B. Longhurst, “Raymond Williams and local cultures.” Environment
and Planning A 23:2 (1991): 229-238.
D. Mitchell, “Culture wars: culture is politics by
another name,” in Cultural Geography: A
Critical Introduction (
R. Williams, Culture
and Society, 1780-1950 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1958).
R. Williams, Culture
(London: Fontana, 1981).
P. Willis, Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids
Get Working Class Jobs (Farnborough: Saxon House, 1977).
2/11 Postculture? (Tim)
D. Mitchell, “There's no such thing as culture: towards a reconceptualization of the idea of
culture in geography,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
20 (1995): 102-116.
A. Gupta, and J. Ferguson “Beyond 'culture': space,
identity, and the politics of difference,” Cultural
Anthropology 7:1 (1992): 6-23.
J. Duncan, & Nancy Duncan. “Culture unbound.” Environment and Planning A 36 (2004),
391-403.
A. Latham, “Research, performance, and doing human
geography: some reflections on the diary-photograph, diary-interview method,” Environment
and Planning A 35 (2003): 1993-2017.
Additional
resources
P. Bourdieu, Outline
of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
J. Butler, Gender
Trouble (London and New York: Routledge, 1990).
J. Clifford, G. Marcus, Eds. Writing Culture; the
poetics and politics of ethnography. (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1986).
D. Cosgrove, Ideas and culture: A response to Don
Mitchell. Transactions 21 (1996):
574-575.
J. Duncan & N. Duncan, Reconceptualizing the idea
of culture in Geography: A reply to Don Mitchell. Transactions of the
M. de Certeau, The
Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
S. Jackson, “Culture and performance: structures of
dramatic feeling,” Chapter 3 in Professing
Performance: Theatre in the Academy from Philology to Performativity (
J. May, “A little taste of something exotic: the
imaginative geographies of everyday life geography” Geography 81 (1996).
C. Nash, “Performativity in practice: some recent work
in cultural geography” Progress in Human
Geography 24 (2000).
G. Rose, “Performing space,” in Massey, Allen, &
Sarre (eds.), Human Geography Today
(1999).
E. Said, “Narrative and social space,” in Culture and Imperialism (New York:
Vintage, 1993), pp. 62-80.
PLACE AND LANDSCAPE
2/18 Social Relations of Place (Jenn)
*J. Agnew, “” from Place and Politics: the geographical
mediation of state and society (1987), pp. 25-107.
D.
*D. Massey, “Power geometry and a progressive sense of place,” in J.
Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson and L. Tickner eds., Mapping the
futures: local cultures, global change (London: Routledge, 1993), 59-69
A. Pred, “Place as historically contingent process: structuration and
the time-geography of becoming places” Annals
of the Association of American Geographers 74:2 (1986), pp. 279-297.
Additional resources
J. Agnew, "The devaluation of place in social science," in J.
Agnew and J. Duncan eds., The Power of Place (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 9-29.
N. Castree, “Differential geographies: place, indigenous rights and
'local' resources.” Political Geography 23 (2004): 133-167.
T. Cresswell, Place: A Short
Introduction (
A. Dirlik, “Place-based imagination: globalism and the politics of
place.” Review, A Journal of the
J. Duncan and D. Ley (eds.), Place/Culture/Representation
(London and New York: Routledge, 1993).
A. Escobar, “Culture sits in places: reflections on globalism and
subaltern strategies of localization.” Political Geography 20 (2001):
139-174.
D.
D. Massey, For Space (London:
Sage, 2005).
D. Massey, Space, Place, and
Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
T. Oakes, “Place and the paradox of modernity,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87:3 (1997),
509-531.
A. Pred, Place, Practice, and Structure; social and spatial
transformation in southern
G. Rose, “The cultural politics of place: local representation and
oppositional discourse in two films.” Transactions of the
M. Samuels, “To rescue place,” Progress in Human Geography 16:4
(1992), 597-604
2/25 Narratives of Place (Tyler)
P. Price,
Additional
resources
B. Anderson, Imagined
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London:
Verso, 1983).
W. Cronon, “A place for stories: nature, history, and
narrative.” Journal of American History
78:4 (1992), 1347-1376.
G. Deleuze & F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
M. Lewis and K. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997).
L. Malkki, “National geographic: the rooting of
peoples and the territorialization of national identities among scholars and
refugees.” Cultural Anthropology 7:1
(1992), 24-44.
E. Said, Orientalism
(New York: Vintage, 1978).
M. Taussig, Shamanism,
Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study of Terror and Healing (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986).
3/4 Phenomenologies of Place (Alicja)
T. Thornton, Being
and Place Among the Tlingit (
Additional
resources
G. Bachalard, The
Poetics of Space, trans. by M. Jolas (Boston: Beacon, 1964), pp. 90-104.
K. Basso, Wisdom
Sits in Places (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996).
A. Buttimer and D. Seamon (eds.), The Human Experience of Space and Place (London: Croom Helm, 1980).
E. Casey, Getting
Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
E. Casey, "How to get from space to place in a
fairly short stretch of time: a philosophical prolegomena," in
E.
Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1997).
M.
Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” from Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter (New
York: Harper Colophon Books, 1971).
M. Jackson, At
Home in the World (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995).
B. Lane, Landscapes
of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in Native American Spirituality (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002)
L. Lippard, The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place
in a Multicentered Society (New York: The New Press, 1997).
J. Malpas, Place and Experience: A Philosophical
Topography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
(London and New York: Routledge, 1958).
C. Nash, “Irish placenames: post-colonial locations.” Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers 24:4 (1999), 457-80.
E. Relph, Place
and Placelenssness (London: Pion, 1976).
S. Schama, Landscape
and Memory (New York: Knopf, 1995).
Y-f. Tuan, Space
and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of
Minneapolis Press, 1977).
Y-f.
Tuan, Morality and Imagination: Paradoxes
of Progress (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989)
3/11 Landscape –
Vernacular to Semiotic (Katie)
*J.B. Jackson, “The Word Itself,” in J.B. Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 3-8.
*J.B. Jackson, “The mobile home on the range,” in A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 53-67.
*D. Cosgrove, selections from Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1998), pp. xi-68.
*G. Rose, “Looking at landscape: the uneasy pleasures
of power, in Feminism and Geography: The
Limits of Geographical Knowledge (
Additional
resources
J. Appleton, “The Problem,” in J. Appleton, The
Experience of Landscape (New York: Wiley, 1975), pp. 1-23.
J. Barrell, The
Dark Side of Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Painting, 1730-1840 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980).
J. Berger, Ways
of Seeing (London: BBC & Penguin, 1972).
A. Birmingham, Landscape
and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1986).
D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels (eds.). The Iconography
of Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
J. Duncan, The City as Text: The Politics of
Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom (1990).
K. Foote, Shadowed
Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1997).
W.G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape
(London: Hoddard and Stoughton, 1955).
D. Lowenthal, “The American scene,” Geographical
Review, 58:1 (1968): 61-88.
D. MacCannell, “The common landscape of John
Brinckerhoff Jackson.” Design Book Review 40 (1999): 50-56.
D. W. Meinig, “The Beholding Eye: Ten Versions of the
Same Scene,” in D.W. Meinig (ed) The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes:
Geographical Essays (Oxford, 1979), pp. 33-48.
W.J.T. Mitchell, “Imperial Landscape,” in W.J.T.
Mitchell (ed) Landscape and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1994), pp. 5-34.
R. Peet, “Review of The City as Text.” Annals
of the Association of American Geographers 83:1 (1993), pp. 184-87.
P. Starrs, “Brinck Jackson in the realm of the
everyday.” Geographical Review 88:4
(1998), 492-506.
C. Tilley, “The Social Construction of Landscape in
Small-Scale Societies: Structures of Meaning, Structures of Power,” pp. 35-67
in C. Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments
(Oxford, U.K.: Berg, 1994).
C. Wilson and P. Groth (eds.), Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies after JB Jackson
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
3/18 Landscape – Substantive (Tim)
*D. Mitchell, “Introduction and Chapters 1, 7 and 8
from The Lie of the Land
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 1-35 and 156-197.
K. Olwig, “Recovering the substantive nature of
landscape,” Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 1996, 86(4): 630 – 653.
*A. Wilson, “Nature at Home” from The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the
Exxon Valdez (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 88-115.
Additional
resources
K. Olwig, Landscape,
Nature, and the Body Politic: From Britain’s Renaissance to America’s New World
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002).
R. Williams, The
Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973).
S. Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to
Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
THE CULTURAL ECONOMY
4/1 NO CLASS
4/8 Cultural Economy – Definitions and Approaches (Jeanne)
*A. Amin and N. Thrift, “Introduction,” in The Blackwell Cultural Economy Reader (
*S. Cunningham, J. Banks, and J. Potts, “Cultural
economy: the shape of the field,” in The
Cultural Economy, eds. H. Anheier and Y. Raj Isar (
*D. Throsby, “Globalization and the cultural economy:
a crisis in value?” in The Cultural
Economy, eds., H. Anheier and Y. Raj Isar (
*A. Pratt, “Locating the cultural economy,” in The Cultural Economy, eds., H. Anheier
and Y. Raj Isar (
P. Jackson, “Commercial cultures: transcending the
cultural and the economic” Progress in
Human Geography 26:1 (2002), 3-18.
Additional resources
P. du Gay (ed.), Production of Culture / Cultures
of Production (London: Sage, 1997).
P. du Gay and M. Pryke (eds.), Cultural Economy: Cultural
Analysis and Commercial Life (London: Sage, 2002).
M. Gertler, “The invention of regional culture” in R.
Lee and J. Wills Geographies of Economies (1997), pp. 47-58
S. Hall, ”The centrality of culture: notes on the cultural
revolutions of our time,” in K. Thompson (ed.) Media and Cultural Regulation
(London: Sage, 1997).
S. Lash & J. Urry, Economies of Signs and Space
(London: Sage, 1994).
R. Lee and J. Wills (eds.), Geographies of
Economies (London: Arnold, 1997).
M.A. O'Donnell, “Attracting the world's attention: the
cultural supplement in Shenzhen Municipality.” positions 14:1 (2006):
67-97.
A. Scott, The Cultural Economy of Cities: Essays on
the Geography of Image-Producing Industries (London: Sage, 2000)
J. Wang, “Culture as leisure and culture as capital.” positions
9:1 (2001): 69-104.
S. Zukin, The Cultures of Cities (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1995).
4/15 Cultural Economy – Globalization & Localization (Todd)
R. Foster, Coca-Globalization:
Following Soft Drinks from
4/22 – 4/29 Cultural Economy – Development & Tourism (Tim)
S. Gregory, The
Devil Behind the Mirror: Globalization and Politics in the