Reconceptualizing the Idea of Culture in Geography: A Reply to Don Mitchell

Abstract

culture concept in the 'new cultural geography'. It is a fine statement of the dangers of reifying culture on the part of geographers who may be tempted to use it as an explanatory variable rather than studying how the category of culture operates in practice. In other words, as geographers, we should be studying the reification of culture rather than reifying the concept of culture ourselves. Mitchell presents his paper as a critique of the work of the 'new cultural geographers' for assuming that culture has ontological status. We wish to make two comments concerning this goal. First, we would argue that, yes, new cultural geographers do make ontological claims for culture and so does Mitchell himself. He states that the idea of culture