The Transformation of Cultural Geography

Abstract

Cultural geography is one of the most exciting areas of geographical work at the moment. Ranging from analyses of everyday objects, views of nature in art or film to studies of the meaning of landscapes and the social construction of place-based identities, it covers numerous issues. Its focus includes the investigation of material culture, social practices and symbolic meanings, approached from a number of theoretical perspectives. I shall attempt to give a flavour of this diversity, showing how the subject and the approaches of cultural geography have changed over time. Writing a chronological review, however, always runs the risk of presenting intellectual history as the inevitable replacement of one approach by another: the latter more sophisticated than the former. In fact the material history of any sub-area of geography is one of contested approaches, and often bitter struggles. Distinguishing between approaches, and placing scholars within one paradigm or another, also makes the reviewer vulnerable to charges of misrepresentation.