Landscapes
Ways of Imagining the World

By Hilary Winchester, et al.
December 2003
Longman / Pearson Education
ISBN: 0-582-28878-9
216 Pages, Illustrated
$67.50 paper original

---

This is a timely and well-written analysis of the meaning of cultural landscapes. The book delves into the layers of meaning that are invested in ordinary landscapes as well as landscapes of spectacle and power. The authors explore the impact of popular culture on landscapes, such as the place-creating power of films as well as the evolving gastronomic landscapes created by cultural fusion. Landscapes, from the multicultural city to the anorexic body, are seen as contested spaces of power and resistance and are visible manifestations of ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality.

This book is a powerful and vivid application of the new cultural geography to case studies not previously visited within cultural geography texts. Landscapes is a cultural geography that places value on two foundational aspects of geography- culture and landscape. It is written in a narrative that is engaging for students of geography, non-geographers, an academic geographers alike. It integrates the foundational emphases of traditional geography with the progressive politics and interests of the 'cultural turn'. Landscapes throws a critical eye upon both exotic and everyday landscapes. It moves beyond the Anglo-American emphasis of much of human geography. In the tradition of the first geographers Landscapes is an exploration - a journey - engaging cultures and landscapes as interesting as those encountered by the first Muslim and Greek geographers.

Professor Hilary P M Winchester is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. Kevin M. Dunn is Senior Lecturer, Geography Program, Faculty of the Built Environment, The University of New South Wales, Australia. Professor Lily Kong teaches at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore


Return to main page of Trans-Atlantic Publications