Developments In Cultural Geography Research Articles

중국에서 문화지리학의 태동과 발전

Examining the emergence and development of cultural geography in China, this study aims to identify major researchers and research trends by generation and to identify major research bases and characteristics by region as well. For these purposes, we tracked the master-apprentice relationship of scholars who published cultural geographical studies in major geographical journals in China. According to the generation classification, scholars could be divided into five generations in this study. Geographical study of culture started in the Huadong region centered on Nanjing University was found to be divided into two bases: Beijing and Guangzhou. Although it is nearly 100 years since geographical study of culture emerged in China, cultural geography was firstly introduced to universities as a course by the third generation scholars in the mid-1980s, shortly after the Chinese economic reform. Leading the research from the late 1990s to the late 2010s, the fourth generation had contributed to the transition from ‘historical and cultural geography’ that inherited from earlier generations to ‘social and cultural geography’. The fifth generation, who began academic activities in the 2010s, has switched to ‘social and cultural geography.’ We argue that ‘institutional sustainability’ and ‘critical mind on issues in China’ are the tasks of Chinese cultural geography.

Walking, eating, sleeping. Rhythm analysis of human/dog intimacy

This article argues that human/dog co-habitation and the interspecies routines of walking, eating, sleeping and the emotions they create, can be fruitfully analyzed through the conceptual frame built from ‘intimacy’ and ‘rhythm’. The rhythmic analytical approach to interspecies routines, including breaks in them and the emotions these breaks create, contributes with a spatio-temporal understanding of human/animal intimacy. As intimacy is inherently a spatial phenomenon, it creates places. Intimate social relations also transform and get transformed by places. ‘Home’ is the typical example, where the iconic emplaced attachment of intimacy with the family is manifested. But the place itself does not create intimacy; instead, it is situationally formed through relations between, in this case, interspecies practices and space. By theorizing auto-ethnographical observations of everyday human/dog routines, the article explores intimacy as a particular social form. Building on recent developments in cultural geography in the field of ‘rhythm analysis,’ it is argued that while intimacy is performed in everyday life, it is foremost produced though 'arrhythmia,' in the moments when the routines are broken.

Auto‐photographic study of everyday emotional geographies

Recent developments in cultural geography have brought forth everyday life and emotions as critical categories for understanding place. Yet, the focus on everyday emotional geographies also presents methodological challenges. This paper argues that auto‐photography is a particularly well‐suited method to explore the intricate relations between everyday practices, emotions and the formation of places. Auto‐photography combines participant‐generated photographs and participants’ interpretative narrations of these photographs. Our argument is based on auto‐photographic research we conducted with 38 young women in Czechia in 2016. We asked participants to photograph everyday places that they associate with positive or negative emotions, or religious meanings, and to discuss their emotions in a following interview. We analysed participants’ photographs together with their narrations. This analysis reveals the emotions and meanings participants attached to photographed places. We argue that the method of auto‐photography helps understand the complexity of everyday emotional geographies that may not be possible through other geographical methods. The strength of auto‐photography is its combination of visual representations and narratives, which help identify how ordinary everyday places without any apparent significance, such as a door or a staircase, might be sites of strong emotional intensity. The insights gained by analysing photographs and narratives together and in relation to one another produce an understanding of emotional bordering practices, anxieties and desires of place‐making. Auto‐photography thus provides multiple layers of visual and textual data that help understand the complexity of emotional geographies in mundane everyday places.

Walking into Clarity: The Dynamics of Self and Place in the Poetry of Ivor Gurney

In the first issue of this journal, Eric Magrane called for a renewed concern with “geopoetic texts and practices that draw on the work of poets as well as geographers.” This article focuses on the English poet, Ivor Gurney, as a means of exploring the relationship between the act of walking and the process of poetic writing. Despite periods of mental instability and the traumatic experience of serving as an ordinary soldier in World War I, Gurney reveals, through his poetry, his intense passion for and close entanglement with his native Gloucestershire places. I examine some of Gurney’s poetry and draw on recent developments in cultural geography to suggest that what Gurney describes as “walking into clarity” might be seen as a continual dialogue and negotiation taking place between the poet and his places. Gurney’s creativity, however, arises from more than just the immediacy of the walking moment. I argue that Gurney’s poetry reveals a performative engagement with a known and loved locality—the knowing and observing eye being as important as the affective encounters in his creative practice. Attunement to the local provides him with the foundation from which his walking footsteps weave a new dynamic of self and place.

The scientific legacy of V. B. Sochava, and future prospects of cultural geography

This paper is concerned with the main statements of V.B. Sochava’s theoretical legacy which are currently central to the advancement of modern cultural geography. Among them are the geographical science studies: metageography and geographical tectology, structural-dynamical approach to culture and landscape, and the concept of the geosystem and its invariant. The study brings out the importance of systems approach to culture and landscapes as well as the significance of the theory of geosystems, a catalyst for the emergence of new cultural-geographical knowledge. The problem of geographical tectology as stated by V.B. Sochava is implemented by adjusting the methods and knowledge of related disciplines for the particular purposes of geographical investigation. An outline is given of the specific character of methodological development of cultural geography in circumstances where the postmodernism world outlook platform is dominant as well as of the “drift” of the interests of the scientific community from the material aspect of man–environment interaction to the postmodern “dematerialization” of social geography. These processes which are progressing more intensely in Western science have influence on national geocultural research. Furthermore, the key characteristics of postmodernization, i.e. recognition of the equivalence and uniqueness of cultural-geographical phenomena, the equality of research standpoints, and refusal from the search for a “metanarrative” unfairly push to the methodological periphery the issues related to evolution, hierarchy, and interobjective connections of culture and landscape. The dominant emphasis on the nonmaterial aspects of cultural-geographical phenomena and processes does not imply that their systems side has lost value. V.B. Sochava’s theoretical developments provide a meaningful potential source for a further advancement of cultural geography. Moreover, even the international science has recently shown an enhancement in the tendency toward the “restoration of materialism” in cultural geography. This paper is built upon an integral approach to demonstrate an avenue for a harmonious combination of the “material” and “nonmaterial” sides of the discipline.

Economy, culture and environment: perspectives on the Australian food industry

SUMMARY Intersections between economy, culture and environment pose exciting future challenges for human geography. Part of Griffith Taylor's pioneering role as a geographer was to investigate relationships between these three aspects of human life, although his agenda was that of environmental determinism. This paper considers these intersections as they relate to contemporary geographical studies of restructuring, in particular the emergence of a genuinely global economic system since about 1980. Recent developments in cultural geography argue that geographical analysis of restructuring has been dominated by an economic determinism which has buried other stories which could be told about industrial change. The paper sketches lines of possible dialogue between economic geography and cultural studies, illustrating the argument with examples from restructuring in the Australian food industry. In opening such a dialogue, economic geography would be better placed to return to interactions between economy, cu...

Raymond Williams and Local Cultures

In this paper it is maintained that Raymond Williams's writings on culture are of great importance to current developments in cultural geography. His work is periodised into three stages and its different subject matters identified. An interpretation of Williams's theory of culture is offered which places particular emphasis on his concepts of ‘structure of feeling’ and ‘knowable community’. The creative tension between Williams's holistic treatment of culture and his stress on cultural struggle is examined. The paper concludes with some suggestions on the uses to be made of Williams's work.

Some Observations on the Science of Cultural Geography

Abstract Historical trends in the rise of cultural geography are examined from the perspective of the philosophy of science. Cultural geography in America originated partly as an answer to environmental determinism, the “Berkeley School” advocating the substitution of empirical induction for the hypothetico-deductive approach of the determinists. The substitution of one methodological approach for another may have retarded the development of cultural geography in that a synthesis of opposing views has not been attempted. In this respect man-land relationships remain as a dichotomy in cultural geography that should not be ignored. Geographers should strive for greater understanding of the relationships between man and the land through the development of environmental models of man, lest antithesis be mistaken for synthesis and assumptions be mistaken for conclusions.