Geographical Thought
An Introduction to Ideas in Human Geography
By Anoop Nayak & Alex Jeffrey
August 2011
Pearson Education
Distrubuted by Trans-Atlantic Publications Inc.
ISBN: 9780132228244
337 pages, Illustrated
$72.50 Paper Original
Geographical Thought provides a clear and accessible introduction to the key ideas and figures in human geography. The book provides an essential introduction to the theories that have shaped the study of societies and space. Opening with an exploration of the founding concepts of human geography in the nineteenth century academy, the authors examine the range of theoretical perspectives that have emerged within human geography over the last century from feminist and marxist scholarship, through to post-colonial and non-representational theories. Each chapter contains insightful lines of argument that encourage readers towards independent thinking and critical evaluation.
Supporting materials include a glossary, visual images, further reading suggestions and dialogue boxes.
1. Geographies of Empire: The Imperial Tradition
Introduction
Empire, imperialism and colonialism
Defining terms
Portuguese and Spanish empires
British Empire
The institionalisation of geography
From ‘fabulous’ to ‘militant’ geography
The Royal Geographical Society
The Societé Géographie de Paris (SGP)
Environmental determinism: climate and race
Environmental determinism and the Panama Canal
Criticisms and dissent
Conclusions
2. The Quantitative Revolution
Introduction
The origins of the quantitative revolution
Political reasons
The quantitative revolution
Positivism
The assumption of neutrality
The absence of politics
The uniformity of human subjects
The legacy of the quantitative revolution
Conclusions
3. Humanistic Geographies
Introduction
Humanistic geography and the challenge to positivism
Extension
Revision
Phenomenology and existentialism
Phenomenology
Existentialism
Humanistic geography in focus: the work of Yi-Fu Tuan
The challenge to humanism
Structure agency
Feminist geography
Conclusions
4. Marxist Radical Geographies
Introduction
Karl Marx
Key Marxist ideas
Historical materialism
The economic base
The superstructure
Ruling ideas
Class struggle
Class consciousness
Commodity fetishism
Radical geography
The ‘turn’ to Marxism
Marxist geography and spatial constructions of class
The political ecology of Marxism
The limits of Marxism
Future horizons
Conclusions
5. Human Geography and the Cultural Turn
Introduction
The meaning of culture
Early traditions of cultural geography
New maps of meaning: British Cultural Studies
Working-class histories
Youth subcultures
Race, ethnicity and nationalism
Popular culture and media theory
The new cultural geography
Landscape as text
The cultural turn from the margins to the centre
Institutionalising cultural geography
Recasting political and economic geography through the cultural turn
Rematerialising culture, reclaiming the social
Conclusions
6. Feminist Geographies
Introduction
First and second wave feminism
First wave feminism
Second wave feminism
Political perspectives of feminism
Radical feminism
Socialist feminists
Establishing feminist geography
Making women visible
Absence from departments and publications
The enduring masculinist rationality of geography
Divergent strategies of resistance
Practicing feminist geography
Qualitative methods
Research position
Collaborative practice
Rethinking gender
7. Geographies of Sexuality
Introduction
Engaging with the object of research
Heteronormativity
Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud
Discursive: Michel Foucault
Performativity: Judith Butler
Geographies of sexuality
Mapping sexuality
Sexuality and space
Heterosexuality
The politics of sexuality
The politics of the discipline
Sexual citizenship
Conclusions
8. Geography, Ethnicity and Racialisation
Introduction
The idea of race
Cultural racisims
Geography and the shadow of empire
Mapping and monitoring race
Urban cultural geographies of ‘race’
Geographies of rural racism
Turning to whiteness
Anti-racist geographies: subverting a white discipline
Conclusions
9. Post-modern Geographies
Introduction
Modernism and modernity
Post-modernity: an historical moment
Post-modernism: a critical practice
Jean-François Lyotard – grand narratives
Michel Foucault – discourse and power
Jacques Derrida – deconstruction
Jean Baudrillard – simulation, simulacra and hyper-reality
Post-modernism: a stylistic phenomena
Art, commercialism and the cult of celebrity
Architecture and the built environment
Geographical engagements: theory, method and practice
Theory
Method
Practice
Post-modern criticisms
Conclusions
10. Critical Geo-politics
Introduction
Origins of geo-politics
Mackinder
Haushofer
Bowman
Decline of geo-politics
Critical geo-politics
Political context
Formal, practical and popular geo-politics
Beyond critical geo-politics
Anti-geo-politics
Normative geo-politics
Conclusions
11. Post-colonial Geographies and the Colonial Present
Introduction
Understanding post-colonialism
Post-colonial geographies
Imaginative geographies: the work of Edward Said
Critiquing Orientalism
Splitting race objects: the work of Frantz Fanon
Blackness, whiteness and psychoanalysis
Undoing race
Geographical contribution
Hybridity and the third space: the work of Homi Bhabha
Colonial stereotypes
Cultural hybridity
Critiquing hybridity
Doing post-colonial geographies
Visual methods and post-colonial spectacle
Post-colonial economic geographies
Conclusions
12. Emotions, Embodiment and Lived Geographies
Introduction
A crisis of representation? Cultural geography and non-representational theory
Understanding affect
Towards ‘more-than-representational-' geographies
Reinvigorating landscape
The problem of performance
Conclusions
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