Cultural Geography

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, cultural geography has become one of the most vibrant branches of human geography. Indeed, the influence of the cultural is so pronounced in human geography that it is not always clear if some of the scholarly work constitutes cultural geography or simply a “culturalization” of other subdisciplines. The lines between cultural and social geography are particularly unclear. For example, research on sexuality, diaspora, transnationalism, disability, and so forth clearly has social dimensions as well as cultural ones. Given the ambiguities and the enlarged sphere of cultural influence, the approach adopted here in introducing research and publications in cultural geography respects the following principles. First, it is historically sensitive; that is, the works introduced begin with traditional cultural geography and move on to new cultural geography. Similarly, numerous concepts introduced below have been central or fashionable for cultural geographers at different times in the development of the subdiscipline (for example, sense of place preceded ideology, hegemony, and resistance, which in turn preceded performance, performativity, embodiment, affect, and emotion). Second, it is philosophically situated, meaning the works introduced are organized within a framework of the larger philosophical shifts in human geography. Third, it is focused in terms of its scope, some might even say narrow, concentrating on expressions that are clearly cultural (e.g., literature, art, music, digital culture, etc.) rather than social or social-cultural (e.g., disability, gender, sexuality, diaspora), which are more often examined in the context of social geography.