Cultural Geographies Old and New GG270 Winter 2013 Dr Margaret Walton-Roberts COURSE OBJECTIVES Survey the development of cultural geography from early environmental approaches, to more recent examinations of power, identity, and representation. Develop knowledge of the history and evolution of the sub discipline of cultural geography, and the key thinkers and theories that have played a role in the sub-discipline s evolution. Students will use individualized eportfolios to demonstrate their understanding of the class material by applying appropriate class content to subjects/reflections of their choice. Starting points The Old Cultural Geography: Carl Sauer and the Berkeley School The cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a culture group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result. (Sauer, 1925 The morphology of landscape. ) Norton, 2006, p. 27. 1
Archaeological evidence of plant domestication and dispersal (Carl Sauer Agricultural origins and dispersals ). Culture Landscape Cultural ecology links between a cultural group and their natural environment Cultural archaeology Cultural ecology of previous eras Environmental history related field, which focuses on the human impact on the natural environment over time Sauer s influence Importance of fieldwork Critical of the use of secondary sources Less theoretical contemplation Seen as a heroic figure, celebrated uncritically. Critical assessment from Duncan in 1980 came a shock to many. Criticism of the Berkeley tradition: The superorganic notion of culture 1. Culture as external to individuals 2. The internalization of culture 3. The homogeneity assumption 4. Habituation: Mechanism for the internalization of culture 2
Repositioning Sauer Sauer was intrigued by the interrelationship between people and the land, but did not embrace the superorganic concept Sauer s students represented a diversity of approaches-became critical of landscape destruction under colonialism and modernity Sauer s concerns can be aligned with work in political ecology, nature-culture, and the sociology of science critiques Reconciliation of human-physical geography could certainly benefit from revisiting Sauer s work. The Emergence of a New Cultural Geography Confluence of intellectual stimuli: Duncan s criticism of Sauerian cultural geography Emergence of humanistic geography rather than human /environment Post-Positivism Post-Structuralism Influences from other branches of the humanities The Cultural Turn in Geography The convergence of the intellectual processes of the 1980s: Post-Positivism, Post-Structuralism, Postmodern deconstruction Generally referred to as the cultural turn, focus on how power infiltrates social processes through difference: race, gender, sexuality as well as class. Common themes identified within the new cultural geography 1. Contemporary as well as historical 2. Always contextual and theoretically informed 3. Social as well as spatial 4. Urban and rural 5. Contingent nature of culture both in dominant ideologies and resistance to them. 6. Economic analysis still dominant, but culture is the medium through which social change is experienced. 3
(Re)reading the Landscape Landscape did not lose importance, but approach to it differed Postmodern deconstruction, but with limits, Geertz s thick description. hermeneutics to recover meaning through a sense of the context. Rereading the landscape as a form of text in order to reveal presences and absences. Gainsborough s portrait of Mr and Mrs Andrews Mr and Mrs Andrews without their heads (Shonibare) hermeneutics to recover meaning through a sense of the context. Fred Wilson, Cabinet Making, Mining the Museum, Baltimore Historical Society, in 1992 http://www.google.ca/search?q=mining+the+museum+images+wilson&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:caqse gmzgsxh6kuhjyf_1gglfgxrh0w&dur=2265&biw=1680&bih=818&sei=ug8ht4cjfatm0qgnvfxdda 4
Fred Wilson reads the urban landscape http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyeapo Xu0Yg&feature=related Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum, Baltimore Historical Society, 1992 http://learningcommunityfall2009.blogspot.com/2011/11/fred-wilson-mining-museum.html Eportfolio What would you mine from around you to include as artifacts in your eportfolio? What might your juxtapositioning and intersection of the lived, delivered and experienced curriculum tell us about your optimum learning, how you see the world? 5