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CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
Cultural geography is a relatively new sub-field within human geography. A very simple and broad definition of Cultural Geography is the study of geographical aspects of human culture.
Areas of Study
The area of study of Cultural Geography is very broad. Topics such as globalization, internationalism, imm/emigration, ecotourism, cultural hegemony and cultural differentiation as a study of differences in way of life encompassing ideas, attitudes, languages, practices, institutions, and structures of power and whole range of cultural practices in geographical areas are just some of the many applicable topics within the study.
History
Cultural geography emerged as an alternative to the environmental determinist theories of the early Twentieth Century, which had believed that people and societies are controlled by the environment in which they develop. [1] Rather than studying pre-determined regions based upon environmental classifications, cultural geography became interested in cultural landscapes. [2] This was led by Carl Sauer (called the father of Cultural geography), at the University of California at Berkeley. As a result of this, cultural geography was long dominated by American writers.
Sauer defined the landscape as the defining unit of geographic study. He saw that cultures and societies both developed out of their landscape, but also shaped them too. [3] This interaction between the 'natural' landscape and man creates the 'cultural landscape'. [4] Sauer's work was highly qualitative and descriptive and was surpassed in the 1930s by the regional geography of Richard Hartshorne, followed by the quantitative revolution. Cultural geography was generally sidelined, though writers such as David Lowenthal continued to work on the concept of landscape.
In the 1970s, the radical critique of geography caused geographers to look beyond the quantitative geography for its ideas. One of these re-assessed areas was also cultural geography. Since the 1980s a "new cultural geography" has emerged, drawing on a diverse set of theoretical traditions including Marxian political economy, feminist theory, post-colonial theory, postmodernism, and poststructuralism.
Scientific journals
Journal of Cultural Geography - published since 1980, currently at Oklahoma State University.
Cultural Geographies - (formerly Ecumene) flagship journal of "new cultural geography."
See also
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