Journal
of Cultural Geography
Book
Review Page
Welcome to the
book
review page for the Journal of Cultural Geography.
Displayed
below are the covers, bibliographical information, and a short synopsis
for books currently available for review.
Book reviews play a vital
role
in the exchange of ideas and advancement of knowledge within
academia.
They call attention to recently published scholarly work, identify its
significance and importance, and warn against possible
deficiencies.
Cultural geographers wishing to review one of the following books are
encouraged
to contact the book review editor identified below.
A complimentary copy of
the
book is sent to the reviewer with a contract, instructions, and
style
sheet. Reviewers are typically allotted 500 to 600 words with an
expected turn-around time of approximately three to four months.
Books
Available
For
Review:
Cuban Landscapes: Heritage, Memory, and
Place
(date posted: 11 September 2009)
By Joseph L. Scarpaci and Armando H. Portela
New York: The Guilford Press,
2009. vii + 216 pp., $30.00
(paperback), ISBN: 978-1-60623-323-8
This accessible book offers a vivid geographic portrait of Cuba,
exploring the island’s streetscapes, sugar cane fields, beaches, and
rural settlements; its billboards, government buildings, and national
landmarks. The authors illuminate how natural and built landscapes have
shaped Cuban identity (cubanidad), and vice versa. They provide
a unique perspective on Cuba’s distinct historical periods and
political economies, from the colonial period through republicanism and
today’s socialist era. Compelling topics include the legacies of
slavery and the sugar industry, the past and future of urban
development, and the impact of “islandness” on sociocultural processes.
Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom
(date posted: 11 September 2009)
By David Harvey
New York: Columbia University
Press,
2009. x + 339 pp., $27.50
(cloth), ISBN: 978-0-231-14846-7
Liberty
and freedom are frequently invoked to justify political action.
Presidents as diverse as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush have built their
policies on some version of these noble values. Yet in practice,
idealist agendas often turn sour as they confront specific
circumstances on the ground. Demonstrated by incidents at Abu Ghraib
and Guantánamo Bay, the pursuit of liberty and freedom can lead
to
violence and repression, undermining our trust in universal theories of
liberalism, neoliberalism, and cosmopolitanism.
Combining his
passions for politics and geography, David Harvey charts a cosmopolitan
order more appropriate to an emancipatory form of global governance.
Political agendas tend to fail, he argues, because they ignore the
complexities of geography. Incorporating geographical knowledge into
the formation of social and political policy is therefore a necessary
condition for genuine democracy.
Harvey begins with an
insightful critique of the political uses of freedom and liberty,
especially during the George W. Bush administration. Then, through an
ontological investigation into geography's foundational concepts—space,
place, and environment—he radically reframes geographical knowledge as
a basis for social theory and political action. As Harvey makes clear,
the cosmopolitanism that emerges is rooted in human experience rather
than illusory ideals and brings us closer to achieving the liberation
we seek.
The Awkward Spaces of Fathering
(date posted: 11 September 2009)
By Stuart C. Aitken
Burlington, VT: Ashgate
Publishing Co.,
2009. xiii + 253 pp., $89.95
(hardback), ISBN: 978-0-7546-7005-6
Societal
notions of fathers have evolved from the distant breadwinner
through genial dad and masculine role model to today's equal co-parent.
This book seeks to explore the spaces and movements of men-as-fathers.
Weaving together theories of space, sexuality and political identity
with the stories of fathers from a range of sources, including popular
culture, it discusses the way in which geographies of space can
disconnect and disempower fathers, while societal notions marginalize
and disassociate them from raising children. It explores how fathering
identities are shaped by family and community spaces and aims to move
the definition of 'fathering' beyond its definition in opposition to
'mothering'. In doing so, it provides insights into the contradictory
nature of father's lives and argues that, rather than moving away from
the traditional notions of masculine roles, that the emotional work of
fathering in itself is an heroic act.
William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape
(date posted: 11 September 2009)
By Charles S. Aiken
Athens: University of Georgia
Press,
2009. xiii + 283 pp., $34.95
(cloth), ISBN: 978-0-8203-3219-2
Charles
S. Aiken, a native of Mississippi who was
born a few miles from Oxford, has been thinking and writing about the
geography of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County for more than thirty
years. William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape is the culmination
of that long-term scholarly project. It is a fresh approach to a
much-studied writer and a provocative meditation on the relationship
between literary imagination and place.
Four main geographical
questions shape Aiken's journey to the family seat of the Compsons and
the Snopeses. What patterns and techniques did Faulkner use—consciously
or subconsciously—to convert the real geography of Lafayette County
into a fictional space? Did Faulkner intend Yoknapatawpha to serve as a
microcosm of the American South? In what ways does the historical
geography of Faulkner's birthplace correspond to that of the fictional
world he created? Finally, what geographic legacy has Faulkner left us
through the fourteen novels he set in Yoknapatawpha?
With an
approach, methodology, and sources primarily derived from historical
geography, Aiken takes the reader on a tour of Faulkner's real and
imagined worlds. The result is an informed reading of Faulkner's life
and work and a refined understanding of the relation of literary worlds
to the real places that inspire them
Spaces of Belonging: Home, Culture and
Identity in 20th-Century French Autobiography
(date posted: 4 September 2009)
By Elizabeth H. Jones
Amsterdam: Rodopi,
2007. 316 pp., Euro$88,20
(paperback), ISBN: 978-90-420-2283-6
Questions of space, place
and identity have become increasingly
prominent throughout the arts and humanities in recent times. This
study begins by investigating the reasons for this growth in interest
and analyses the underlying assumptions on which interdisciplinary
discussions about space are often based. After tracing back the history
of contact between Geography and Literary Studies from both
disciplinary perspectives, it goes on to discuss recent academic work
in the field and seeks to forge a new conceptual framework through
which contemporary discussions of space and literature can operate. The
book then moves on to a thorough application of the interdisciplinary
model that it has established. Having argued that the experience of
contemporary space has rendered questions of home and belonging
particularly pressing, it undertakes detailed analysis of how these
phenomena are articulated in a selection of recent French life writing
texts. The close, text-led readings reveal that whilst not often
highlighted for their relevance to the analysis of space, these works
do in fact narrate the impact of some of the most significant cultural
experiences of the twentieth century, including the Holocaust and the
AIDS crisis, upon geo-cultural senses of identity. Home is shown to be
a deeply problematic, yet strongly desired, element of the contemporary
world.The book concludes by addressing the underlying thesis that
contemporary life writing might provide just the `postmodern maps? that
could help not only literary scholars, but also geographers, better
understand the world today.
Main Street to Mainframes: Landscape and Social Change in
Poughkeepsie
(date posted: 4 September 2009)
By Harvey K. Flad and Clyde Griffen
Albany: State University of
New York Press,
2009. xiv + 451 pp., US$30.00
(hardback), ISBN: 978-1-4384-2613-6
The history of growth,
decline, and revitalization in Poughkeepsie, New
York, parallels that of many other small northeastern cities. Main
Street to Mainframes tells the story of Poughkeepsie's transformation
over the past three centuries--from an agricultural market town, to a
small city with a diversified economy centered on Main Street, to an
urban region dependent on the success of one corporation--and how this
transformation has affected the lives and landscape of its inhabitants.
As it adjusted to major changes in agriculture, transportation, and
industry, Poughkeepsie was also shaped by the forces and tensions of
immigration and race. The voices of immigrant and migrant newcomers,
from the Germans, Irish, and African Americans of the nineteenth
century to the Italians, Poles, and Latinos of the twentieth, enliven
the narrative and offer personal perspectives on the social and
demographic shifts that have taken place over the years. The book also
places Poughkeepsie in the context of the mid-Hudson Valley's other
cities--Kingston, Newburgh, and Hudson--as they competed from the
colonial period onward. Finally, the book examines recent
revitalization efforts based on tourism, culture, and the arts. More
than just a local history, Main Street to Mainframes addresses
important issues in urban and regional planning, community development,
and sociology. Like a palimpsest, Poughkeepsie shows how past
landscapes live on in the present, and how, over time, popular
perceptions both shape and reflect urban and rural realities.
My Kind of County: Door County Wisconsin
(date posted: 8 May 2009)
By John Fraser Hart
Chicago: University of Chicago Press and The Center for American Places
at Columbia College Chicago,
2008. xi + 163 pp., US$27.50
(hardback), ISBN: 978-1-9300-6686-1
The shores of Door County,
Wisconsin have long served as an idyllic
retreat for Midwestern families. The regions scenic beauty is augmented
by a rich history that reflects the classic American experience and
John Fraser Hart now pays homage to the “Cape Cod of the Midwest” in
this engaging chronicle.
A renowned scholar and a summer
home owner
in Door County for over fifty years, Hart possesses intimate knowledge
of the physical geography and cultural history of the region. With his
incisive geographers eye, he charts the gorgeously sprawling landscape
that draws more than two million visitors annually, including the
limestone bluffs along Green Bay that loom as high as 200 feet. He also
explores Door Countys agricultural heritageincluding the famous cherry
orchardsas well as the difference between the Green Bay and Lake
Michigan sides of the peninsula, and the quiet interior region. The
book then turns to the cultural aspects of the region, examining
diverse topics such as the history of the first ethnic European
settlers, the tourist economy, and the settlements primarily Belgian
architecture.r
Frontiers of Femininity: A New Historical
Geography of the Nineteenth-Century American West
(date posted: 17 April 2009)
By Karen M. Morin
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
2008. xii + 278 pp., US$29.95
(hardback), ISBN: 0-8156-6167-7
British explorer and professional travel writer Isabella Bird is, to
the modern eye, a study in contradictions. One of the premier
mountaineers and world explorers of her generation, she was, in 1892,
the first woman elected to London's Royal Geographic Society. And yet
Bird's books on her travels are filled with depictions of herself and
other women that reinforce the "properly feminine" domestic and
behavioral codes of her day. In this fascinating and highly
original collection of essays, Karen Morin explores the self-expression
of travel writers like Bird by giving geographic context to their work.
With a rare degree of clarity the author examines relationships among
nineteenth-century American expansionism, discourses about gender, and
writings of women who traveled and lived in the American West in the
late nineteenth century -- British travelers, American journalists, a
Native American tribal leader, and female naturalists. Drawing from a
rich diversity of primary sources, from published travelogues and
unpublished archival sources such as letters and diaries to newspaper
reportage, Morin considers ways in which women's writing was influenced
by the material circumstances of travel in addition to the various
social norms that circumscribed female roles. Ranging in scale from the
interior of train cars and the homes of these women to the colonial
projects of conquering the American West, the author illustrates how
geography was fundamental to the formation of women's identity and
greatly influenced the gendered and colonialist language found in their
writing.
My Kind of Midwest: Omaha to Ohio
(date posted: 15 April 2009)
By John A. Jakle
Chicago: The Center for
American Places at Columbia College Chicago,
2008. xi + 153 pp., US$27.50
(hardback), ISBN: 1-930-066-87-2
“Will it play in Peoria?”
That question—only half-joking—hovers
over everything from politics to television, an acknowledgment that the
Midwest is perhaps the most emblematic regions of the United States
today. Stereotypes both good and bad abound about Midwesterners, but in
this incisive yet poignant book, John Jakle reveals a rich and telling
portrait of the contemporary Midwest and its people.
In
engaging prose, Jakle chronicles his childhood and adult life in the
Midwest interwoven with a look at the region’s geographic and cultural
history. My Kind of Midwest reveals that the region is more
than just a group of “flyover states,” as Jakle tells a engaging
narrative that recounts his youthful explorations of the flourishing
cities of Detroit and Chicago in the 1940s; the rapid growth and
importance of gateway cities such as Omaha, Kansas City, and Cincinnati
along the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers; and the integral role
of tourism to Midwestern states’ economies.
An intimate and compelling narrative of one man’s connection to the
American landscape, My Kind of Midwest will be essential
reading for all those with ties to the heartland.
Theme Park
(date posted: 21 January 2009)
By Scott A. Lukas
London: Reaktion Books, Ltd, 2008. i+ 272 pp., US$27.00
(paperback), ISBN: 978-186-189-394-9
Theme parks are a
uniquely interactive and enduring form of
entertainment that have influenced architecture, technology, and
culture in surprising ways for more than a century, as Scott Lukas now
reveals in his compelling historical chronicle.
Theme Park
takes the primitive amusements of pleasure gardens as its starting
point and launches from there into a rich, in-depth investigation of
the evolution of the theme park over the twentieth century. Lukas
examines theme parks in countries around the world—including in the
United States, Mexico, Europe, Japan, China, South Africa, and
Australia—and how themed fairs and parks developed through diverse
means and in a variety of settings. The book examines world-famous and
lesser-known parks, including the early parks of Coney Island; Madrid’s
Movieworld; a series of World Fairs and their luxurious exhibition
halls; Six Flags parks and virtual theme parks today; and, of course,
the unparalleled achievements of Disneyland and Disney World.
Lukas
analyzes the theme park as a living entity that unexpectedly shapes
people, their relationships, and the world around them. Theme parks
have now become complex representations of the human mind itself, he
contends, through its interpretations of books, feature films, video
games, and Web sites. Ultimately, Theme Park reveals, the wider
influence of theme parks can be found in the shopping malls, branded
stores, and casinos that employ the tricks and techniques of amusement
parks to dominate our entertainment world today.
Packed with captivating illustrations, Theme Park
takes us on historical roller coaster ride that both reanimates the
places that shaped our childhoods and anticipates the future of
escapism and fantasy fun.
Down in the Dumps: Place, Modernity,
American Depression
(date posted: 28 July 2008)
By Jani Scandura
Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. xix + 322 pp., US$24.95
(paperback), ISBN:
978-0-8223-3666-2
Mucking around in the messy
terrain of American trash, Jani Scandura
tells the story of the United States during the Great Depression
through evocative and photo-rich portraits of four locales: Reno, Key
West, Harlem, and Hollywood. In investigating these Depression-era
“dumps,” places that she claims contained and reclaimed the cultural,
ideological, and material refuse of modern America, Scandura introduces
the concept of “depressive modernity,” an enduring affective component
of American culture that exposes itself at those moments when the
foundational myths of America and progressive modernity—capitalism,
democracy, individualism, secularism, utopian aspiration—are thrown
into question. Depressive modernity is modernity at a standstill.
Such a modernity is not stagnant or fixed, nor immobile, but is
constituted by an instantaneous unstaging of desire, territory,
language, and memory that reveals itself in the shimmering of place.
An
interpretive bricolage that draws on an unlikely archive of 1930s
detritus—office memos, scribbled manuscripts, scrapbooks, ruined
photographs, newspaper clippings, glass eyes, incinerated stage sets,
pulp novels, and junk washed ashore—Down in the Dumps escorts
its readers through Reno’s divorce factory of the 1930s, where couples
from across the United States came to quickly dissolve matrimonial
bonds; Key West’s multilingual salvage economy and its status as the
island that became the center of an ideological tug-of-war between the
American New Deal government and a politically fraught Caribbean;
post-Renaissance Harlem, in the process of memorializing, remembering,
grieving, and rewriting a modernity that had already passed; and
Studio-era Hollywood, Nathanael West’s “dump of dreams,” in which the
introduction of sound in film and shifts in art direction began to
transform how Americans understood place-making and even being itself.
A coda on Alcatraz and the Pentagon brings the book into the present,
exploring how American Depression comes to bear on post-9/11 America.
A Theory of Enclaves
(date posted: 28 July 2008)
By Evgeny Vinokurov
Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007. ix+317
pp., US$80.00 (hardback), ISBN:
0-7391-2403-X
Evgeny Vinokurov is head of
the Economic Analysis Unit at the Eurasian Development Bank.
Providing a fully fledged theory of enclaves and exclaves, A Theory of
Enclaves covers a wide scope of regions and territories throughout the
world, focusing on three facets of enclaves' existence: political,
economic, and social. Rich with maps and illustrations, this book
covers 282 enclaves with a combined population of approximately 3
million, and shows the importance of enclaves because of their specific
status and the issues they raise for both the mainland and surrounding
states.
Mediterranean
Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity
(date posted: 16 April 2008)
By Iain Chambers
Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. i+181
pp., US$21.95 (paperback), ISBN:
978-0-8223-4150-5
The cultural theorist Iain Chambers is known for his historically
grounded, philosophically informed, and politically pointed inquiries
into issues of identity, alterity, and migration, and the challenge
postcolonial studies poses to conventional Western thought. With Mediterranean
Crossings,
he challenges insufficient prevailing characterizations of the
Mediterranean by offering a vibrant interdisciplinary and intercultural
interpretation of the region’s culture and history. The “Mediterranean”
as a concept entered the European lexicon only in the early nineteenth
century. As an object of study, it is the product of modern
geographical, political, and historical classifications. Chambers
contends that the region’s fundamentally fluid, hybrid nature has long
been obscured by the categories and strictures imposed by European
discourse and government.
In evocative and erudite prose,
Chambers renders the Mediterranean a mutable space, profoundly marked
by the linguistic, literary, culinary, musical, and intellectual
dissemination of Arab, Jewish, Turkish, and Latin cultures. He brings
to light histories of Mediterranean crossings—of people, goods,
melodies, thought—that are rarely part of orthodox understandings.
Chambers writes in a style that reflects the fluidity of the exchanges
that have formed the region; he segues between major historical events
and local daily routines, backwards and forwards in time, and from one
part of the Mediterranean to another. A sea of endlessly overlapping
cultural and historical currents, the Mediterranean exceeds the
immediate constraints of nationalism and inflexible identity. It offers
scholars an opportunity to rethink the past and present and to imagine
a future beyond the confines of Western humanistic thought.
Contact Information:
Jeffrey S. Smith, Ph.D.
Book Review Editor
118 Seaton Hall / Geography
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-2904
(785) 532-3412
jssmith7@ksu.edu
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Last
Updated: 11 September 2009