Cultural Geographies The Basics

Cultural Geographies: The Basics offers an accessible introduction to one of the most exciting and eclectic fields of academic study available to students today. It unpacks key conceptual and methodological innovations in cultural geography and outlines the new perspectives these offer for making sense of our world. Showcasing the dynamic transformations that cultural geography brings to contemporary understandings of cultural life, this book guides its readers through an exhilarating exploration of six key problematics at the cutting-edge of geographical thought: Representation, Nature, Technology, Bodies, Politics, and Methods. Through this original approach, the book outlines a selection of the most important debates and perspectives in the field, providing readers with user-friendly introductions to key concepts like ‘affect,’ ‘micropolitics,’ ‘assemblage,’ ‘post-phenomenology,’ and the ‘more-than-human’ along the way. The book incorporates a range of engaging empirical examples to illustrate how the conceptual, methodological, and ethico-political innovations developed by cultural geographers can be used to shed new light on the most urgent challenges of our times: from the destruction of the natural world, to the emergence of new spaces and forms of political activism, to the ethical and existential implications of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence. This book will be essential reading for undergraduate students making their first forays into cultural geography, as well as readers and researchers from other humanities and social science disciplines (like Sociology, Media and Film Studies, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, and Philosophy) interested in what a geographical approach to culture has to offer.