Cultural Geographies recent issues

Travelling vulnerabilities: mobile timespaces of quiescence

Bissell, D. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

This paper investigates the relationship between mobility and embodied experiences of quiescence. Rather than conceptualizing quiescence as an experience that is opposite to activity, this paper explores how various experiences of quiescence emerge through the course of a railway journey. The first section of the paper illustrates how particular dispositions of vulnerability have the potential to generate a series of desirable quiescent experiences such as daydreaming and relaxation. The second section explores how these vulnerable dispositions also have the potential to generate a series of less-comfortable quiescent experiences such as lethargy, tiredness and agitation. In doing so, this paper emphasizes the necessity to take seriously how the experience of travel itself impacts on and conditions the affective capacities of the travelling body for feeling in particular ways. In contrast to work within cultural geography that has focused on the conscious, reflective and signifying practices of the body, this paper illuminates how the multiplicity of quotidian quiescent experiences induces a different set of experiential relationships between a more vulnerable body and the timespace of the railway journey.

Place symbolism and land politics in Beowulf

Elden, S. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

This article provides a reading of the Old English poem Beowulf, with a focus on its symbolic and political geographies. The key question is the role of place or site in the poem in general terms, and the more specific issue of land. The article first analyses three significant sites in the narrative — the locations of the battles between Beowulf and Grendel, Grendel’s mother and the dragon. Each of these places — the hall, the mere, and the burial-mound — are shot through with powerful emotive, elemental, symbolic and material geographies. Analysis then moves to the politics of land, a resource which is gifted, distributed, disputed and fought over. While part of a larger project which seeks to look at the conceptual and historical relation between land, terrain and territory, this article offers a more modest focused study of a single text from a particular period.

Malthus at mid-century: neo-Malthusianism as bio-political governance in the post-WWII United States

Schlosser, K. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

This paper provides a discursive history of neo-Malthusianism in the United States, focusing primarily on the mid-20th century. In the process, I critically examine texts invoking Malthusian arguments in relation to the politics of sex and birth control, class and eugenics, and race and geopolitics, focusing on how they rendered human population growth intelligible in particularly reductive and naturalistic ways. The purpose is to show how this history impinges upon the construction of population-resource theory after WWII, focusing specifically on William Vogt’s Road to survival and Fairfield Osborn’s Our plundered planet. I argue that the production and circulation of generalized models of population-induced conflict in the post-war United States was an important part of the nationalization and government harnessing of science in the name of national security, and relevant to post-war developmentalism and early Cold War containment doctrine. This helps us understand how neo-Malthusian discourse has been deployed as a form of bio-political governance.

Traffic in Souls: the 'new woman,' whiteness and mobile self-possession

Olund, E. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

Traffic in Souls (Universal, 1913) inaugurated a spate of so-called white slave pictures at a time the US was experiencing a moral panic over prostitution. The film enacts a sexual and racial geography of the industrial city, one that is mobile and aleatory and requires a similarly mobile yet self-possessed subject to navigate it and its dangers successfully. Social reformers staffing the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures sought to steer the narrative outcome of the film toward a certain moral end, one that encouraged the production of a governmental subjectivity for its white, female spectators. This was a ‘constructive’ regulatory agenda toward sexuality through cinema that worked in tension with the more coercive statutory prohibition of prostitution, one that was thoroughly racialized through its exclusion of African Americans from concern.

Televangelical publics: secularized publicity and privacy in the Trinity Broadcasting Network

Wilford, J. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

With a recent resurgence in interest in the geography of religion, questions of the limits, qualities and efficacy of public versus private religiosity have come to the fore. This article is concerned with interpreting the public headquarters of one of the world’s most popular religious broadcasters, Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), through the lens of the public/private binary and its use in the secularization paradigm. It is argued that the mediated public engagement of religious broadcasting renders the public/private distinction in the secularization paradigm problematic. Despite the paradigm’s postulation of increasing privatization, religious broadcasters like TBN are fully engaged with a mediatic public. However, the peculiar nature of TBN’s headquarters and its relationship to the broadcaster’s central mission suggest that in the final instance, the secularization paradigm accounts for TBN’s inability to effectively engage a material, embodied public.

Travel projects: landscape, art, movement

Merriman, P., Webster, C. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

Book review: Spaces of global cultures: architecture, urbanism, identity. By Anthony D. King. London and New York: Routledge. 2004. xix + 256 pp. {pound}25.99 paper. ISBN 9780415196208

Huxley, M. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

Book review: Nature and nation: forests and development in Peninsula Malaysia. By Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) Press. 2005. 526 pp. {pound}19.99 paper. ISBN: 9788791114496

Imort, M. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

Book review: Visions of the city: utopianism, power and politics in twentieth-century urbanism. By David Pinder. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2005. xi + 354 pp. {pound}20.99 paper. ISBN 9780748614882

Bonnett, A. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

Book review: Nanoq: flat out and bluesome -- a cultural life of polar bears. By Bryndis Snaebjornsdottir and Mark Wilson. London: Black Dog Publishing. 2006. 191 pp. {pound}19.95 paper. ISBN 978190477239

Matless, D. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

Book review: Regulating aversion: tolerance in the age of identity and empire. By Wendy Brown. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2006. 288 pp. {pound}14.95 paper. ISBN 97814008127473

Kaplan, A. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

Book review: Neoliberalism as exception: mutations in citizenship and sovereignty. By Aihwa Ong. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 2006. 292 pp. paper $22.95. ISBN 9780822337485

Mitchell, K. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

Book review: Total landscape, theme parks, public space. By Miodrag Mitrasinovic. Aldershot, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 2006. 296pp. {pound}45.00 cloth. ISBN 9780754643333

Warren, S. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

Book review: Colonial lives across the British Empire: imperial careering in the long nineteenth century. Edited by David Lambert and Alan Lester. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006. xvi + 376 pp. {pound}60.00 cloth. ISBN 9780816644131

Ogborn, M. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

Book review: Shanghai and the edges of empires. By Meng Yue. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2006. Xxx + 336 pp. $25.00 paper. ISBN 9780816644131

Bickers, R. — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:10:34 PDT

Naked in nature: naturism, nature and the senses in early 20th century Britain

Morris, N. J. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

Advocates of naturist practice have long celebrated it as the authentic human—nature relationship, a way of rekindling our connections with the natural world, and a means of achieving and maintaining physical, mental and spiritual health. Using Hans Surén's book Man and sunlight (1927) as an example, this paper explores the importance of sensory perception to, and the embodied geographies of, naturism and the particular ways in which early 20th century naturists conceptualized, valued and attached meaning to the relationship between the body and nature. In so doing, the paper outlines the ways in which naturist practice reflected contemporary European-wide debates on urbanism, nationhood, health, and nature, and highlights some of the connections between early naturist philosophy and contemporary phenomenological theory.

Cities, citizenship, contested cultures: Berlin's Palace of the Republic and the politics of the public sphere

Staiger, U. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

The notion of the `public sphere' stands in principle for normative as well as historical conditions of civic participation critically legitimating the democratic state. Yet it also tends to be associated very readily with the distinctly spatial dimension inherent in the terms it is related with, such as public space, agora, or more recently, the network. Arguably, however, an ill-defined distinction between these concepts in fact obscures rather than highlights the role public space — and particularly urban public sites — may play in the creation of an active public sphere. Taking recourse to the debates surrounding the future of Berlin's `Palace of the Republic', the former parliament building of the German Democratic Republic, this article seeks to explicitly consider the role urban sites may play for the participation of civil society in decision-making processes. Public urban spaces, it argues, while historically taken to provide citizens with regulated sites for interaction and debate, increasingly become the object of, rather than the place for, civic discourses and will-formation.

Beware the Elephant in the Bush: myths, memory and indigenous traditional knowledge in north-eastern Namibia

Moore, L. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

This article draws on a case study exploring the value of elephant wisdom and myths in managing human-elephant conflict in Caprivi (Namibia). It does so to highlight that Indigenous Traditional Knowledge (ITK) is more flexible than recent concerns suggest. This is because ITK transforms in response to changes in both the biophysical and wider socio-political setting of people's environment. The article demonstrates the transformative nature of ITK by applying the findings of the case study to the literature associated with myths, truth claims and collective memory to argue that ITK has a strong social and cultural element. As such, ITK can be viewed as cultural knowledge which is essential to people's adaptation to their social and biophysical environment. Therefore, ITK will evolve to combine traditional forms of knowledge with new knowledge as the needs of society change, whether this is due to changes in the biophysical, socio-political or both environments. This finding provides valuable insight into the dynamic nature of ITK; it also offers new perspectives on culture and cultural memory in making sense of the world.

A mall for all? Race and public space in post-apartheid Cape Town

Houssay-Holzschuch, M., Teppo, A. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

This article analyses post-apartheid public spaces through social and spatial practices at the Victoria & Alfred (V&A) Waterfront mall in Cape Town. Our empirical evidence suggests that these public spaces involve much more than just consumption patterns, as they sustain and support novel ways of asserting social identities in a new political situation. These changes are, however, quite complex and fraught with ambivalence. Consequently, we scrutinize how race is staged in that space, and how racial diversity produces various kinds of boundaries. We then argue that these urban practices lead us to an understanding of the precarious balance between private and public spaces. We propose the notion of `publicization' — the process whereby private spaces acquire a more public dimension.

Scipio Africanus: film, internal colonization and empire

Caprotti, F. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

This paper analyses the film Scipione l'Africano (Scipio the African) (Gallone, 1937), relating it to the fascist land reclamation and internal colonization project in the Pontine Marshes as well as Italy's imperial ambitions in Africa. The film, dealing with the defeat of Hannibal by Roman military leader Scipio, posits clear parallels between the Roman empire and the fascist regime, and between Scipio and Mussolini. The paper argues that the filming of Scipio the African on the `conquered' landscape of the Pontine Marshes was a metaphorical allusion to the supposedly successful Italian colonial project in Africa in the 1930s. The landscape of the Pontine Marshes is examined first of all, followed by analysis of the filming of Scipio the African in the marshes through newsreels from the era. The paper then examines the film's content, focusing on representational parallels between a glorious Roman past and a projected victorious fascist future, mediated through the success of the fascist internal colonization initiative in the Pontine Marshes.

Liquid city: reflections on making a film

Gandy, M. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

Landscape and cinematography

Keiller, P. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

Book review: Fashion's world cities. By Christopher Breward and David Gilbert. Oxford: Berg Publishers. 2006. xv + 285 pp. {pound}60.00 hardback. ISBN-13 9781845204129. {pound}19.99 paper. ISBN-13 9781843204136

Eicher, J. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

Book review: Globalization's contradictions: geographies of discipline, destruction and transformation. Edited by Dennis Conway and Nik Heynen. Abingdon, Oxon, UK and New York, NY, USA: Routledge. 2006. xiv + 287 pp. {pound}23.99 paperback. ISBN 0415770629

James, A. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

Book review: Doing things with things: the design and use of everyday objects. Edited by A. Costall and O. Dreier. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2006. ix + 242 pp. {pound}55 hardback. ISBN 0754646564

Hill, J. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

Book review: Archive Stories. Facts, fictions and the writing of history. Edited by Antoinette Burton. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 2005. 396 pp. ISBN 082233688X

Maddrell, A. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

Book review: Presenting America's world: strategies of innocence in national geographic magazine, 1888--1945. By Tamar Y. Rothenberg. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate. 2007. x + 190 pp. Ill. $59.95 hardcover. ISBN 9780754645108

Lutz, C. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

Book review: Tradition, culture and development in Africa: historical lessons for modern development planning. By Ambe J. Njoh. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 2006. xii + 228 pp. {pound}50.00 cloth. ISBN 9780754648840

Owusu, F. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

Book review: Geopolitics: a very short introduction. By Klaus Dodds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. 182 pp. {pound}6.99 paperback. ISBN 9780199206582

Sidaway, J. D. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

Book review: Why the French don't like headscarves: Islam, the state, and public space. By John R. Bowen. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2007. x + 290 pp. $27.95/{pound}16.95 cloth. ISBN 9780691125060

Nagel, C. R. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:51:56 PDT

Special issue: Indigenous cartographies

Sletto, B. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:09:04 PDT

Cartography, territory, property: postcolonial reflections on indigenous counter-mapping in Nicaragua and Belize

Wainwright, J., Bryan, J. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:09:04 PDT

The attention given to indigenous peoples' use of maps to make claims to land and rights of self-government raises the question: what exactly it is that these maps do? This paper outlines an analytic for examining indigenous mapping projects, drawing upon two prominent instances — by the Maya of Belize and the Mayangna community of Awas Tingni in Nicaragua — where human rights lawsuits have been woven together with participatory mapping. In each case, map-making was intricately linked to the formulation of legal claims, resulting in a pair of much-celebrated maps and legal precedents regarding the recognition of indigenous land rights. We argue that these strategies do not reverse colonial social relations so much as they rework them. Notwithstanding the creativity expressed through these projects, they remain oriented by the spatial configuration of modern politics: territory and property rights. This spatial configuration both accounts for and limits the power of indigenous cartography. This impasse is not a contradiction that can be resolved; rather, it constitutes an aporia for which there is no easy or clear solution. Nonetheless, it must be confronted.

The paradox of boundaries in Coast Salish territories

Thom, B. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:09:04 PDT

This article grapples with the seeming paradox in the notion of representing cartographic boundaries for an indigenous community whose core social relationships are embedded in a moral ethos of borderless kin networks. While ethnographic maps of the Coast Salish people (southwest British Columbia and northwest Washington) have traditionally represented territories as discretely bounded, continuous regions, contemporary land claims maps submitted by Coast Salish political leaders reveal a nest of overlapping and interlocking lines. The paper argues that delineating territories based strictly on land use and occupancy does not take into account broader relationships between people and place. Property, language, residence and identity are categories also appropriate to Coast Salish territorial boundaries, while ideas and practices of kin, travel, descent and sharing make boundaries permeable. The paper considers the boundary lines created by Coast Salish leaders within the context of land claims, which potentially, have the power to transform Coast Salish social and political relations.

The challenges of mapping complex indigenous spatiality: from abstract space to dwelling space

Roth, R. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:09:04 PDT

Participatory mapping has become an indispensable tool in the struggle of indigenous peoples to claim their rights to land and resources. It has also, however, come under criticism for its potential to increase state regulation, replace indigenous conceptions of territory and property, and to create conflict. This paper starts from the premise that the problem is not mapping per se, but the conception of abstract space we allow to frame and guide our representation of indigenous territories, resource use and management. The development of a more effective participatory mapping practice thus requires a critical engagement with the conception of space that participatory mappers are attempting to map. Using research conducted in two Karen communities in Thailand, this paper develops a conception of `dwelling space' meant to better capture the complex spatiality of indigenous resource use and serve as a potential alternative to abstract space. I conclude by arguing for a renewed practice of community-based mapping that takes seriously the spatial complexity of indigenous territory.

On the politics and the possibilities of participatory mapping and GIS: using spatial technologies to study common property and land use change among pastoralists in Central Tibet

Bauer, K. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:09:04 PDT

This article critically and reflexively examines the process of applying participatory mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to investigate land use change and common property among pastoralists in Central Tibet. It explores the tensions inherent to participatory mapping in contemporary China and asks if participatory methods of recording and asserting territoriality are a plausible subaltern intervention for Tibetans living under Chinese political rule. In development and research circles, participatory mapping has been discussed and, slowly, tested in the field as a tool for `empowerment'. Yet the political currency of literature on participatory (or `counter') mapping has been developed predominantly in contexts where there is a dialogue, however asymmetric, between state and indigenous groups, and where these cartographic interventions can identify and delineate political boundaries in ways that may allow local or indigenous groups some measure of autonomy. This article extends critical geography on participatory mapping and spatial technologies such as GIS by reflecting on their relevance to Central Tibet, which has had a significantly different political history than the locales where indigenous cartographies have been previously deployed. For pastoralists living in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, politically charged dynamics with respect to autonomy and the writ of boundary making preclude any possibility that participatory mapping can `empower' participants or give them greater authority in government negotiations: the scope for political contestation in Tibet is narrow and highly circumscribed. Even though participatory mapping is of limited utility as a tool for mobilization in the Tibetan context, the case study offers possibilities for the uses of participatory mapping and computer-driven spatial methodologies to blend information about land use and common property under different regimes of governance.

`Indigenous people don't have boundaries': reborderings, fire management, and productions of authenticities in indigenous landscapes

Sletto, B. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:09:04 PDT

Participatory mapping has allowed indigenous groups to produce and to varying degrees distribute counter-representations of indigenous landscapes, including boundaries that delineate `their' lands from those of the state and other indigenous groups. Through counter-mapping, indigenous groups thus continue to produce boundaries that are, in many ways, products of historical struggles and tensions within indigenous communities, and which also attempt to reconfigure relations with a plethora of state agencies and other external actors. Thus such cartographic representations must be understood as contested, formalized representations that to varying degrees reflect (re)constructions of boundaries that assume different symbolic meanings in different social and historical contexts. Similarly, the power of state boundaries is contingent on fractures in state power, including contestations and conflicts of interest between and within state agencies. As in the case of the Gran Sabana, Venezuela, more invisible boundaries often have greater potential to perpetuate state influence in indigenous landscapes. This paper draws on the literature in postmodern geopolitics and Gramscian perspectives on state power to grapple with the social production of boundaries and relations of power in indigenous landscapes, and to critique the traditional binary posited between state (hegemonic) and indigenous (`counter') maps.

Erratum

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

An experience of equifinality

Delano Smith, C. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Denis Cosgrove: reflections on his career at Oxford Polytechnic

Pepper, D. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Denis Cosgrove and the origins of cultural geographies

Duncan, J. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Denis Cosgrove as interdisciplinary scholar

Brotton, J. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Denis Cosgrove and the `cultural turn'

Jackson, P. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

The making of The iconography of landscape

Daniels, S. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Denis Cosgrove: a personal tribute

Roberts, N. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Encountering geography with Denis Cosgrove

Atkinson, D. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Denis Cosgrove at Royal Holloway, 1994--1999

Driver, F. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

The making of `landscape surgery' at Royal Holloway

Martins, L. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Denis Cosgrove in Europe

Soderstrom, O. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Aesthete of living

della Dora, V. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Border-processes and homemaking: encounters with possums in suburban Australian homes

Power, E. R. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Ruptures in borders that materially and conceptually separate western homes from nature, nonhumans and the outside have been conceptualized as disrupting and destabilizing home, and provoking a sense of anxiety in homemakers. This paper argues that border ruptures can also contribute to feelings of homeyness at a number of scales. Everyday experiences of border-making and rupture at home are explored through the accounts of 24 residents of suburban Sydney who have lived with uninvited brushtail possums in the wall and ceiling cavities of their homes. Human residents primarily encountered possums through sound and smell-scapes that permeated homes' immediate physical borders. These events at times unsettled home's human residents, but also simultaneously contributed to residents' feelings of belonging within home, the urban environment and the nation. The paper particularly attends to the role of nonhuman agency in processes of border-making and rupture at home, focusing on the activity of brushtail possums as well as the role that less evidently active structures like walls and ceilings play in mediating human—possum interactions.

Elegy to an iconographic place: reconstructing the regionalism/ landscape dialectic in L'Horta de Valencia

Prytherch, D. L. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

This paper explores the dialectical relationship between regionalist discourses and landscapes in the contested making and unmaking of an iconographic European place: the millennia old, irrigated croplands of L'Horta de València (in Valenciano-Catalan) surrounding Valencia, Spain. Drawing upon archival and interview research I ask: How does the regionalism/landscape dialectic function within the historical co-construction of regional politics and places? The regional capital of Valencia has developed in symbiosis with (and often at the expense of) its surrounding croplands. If L'Horta has served as a traditional referent for Valencian regionalist discourse, however, accelerating urbanization has caused some to rearticulate Valencianism as nationalist resistance to urban speculation and economic globalization, contesting the legitimacy of regional government. But this regionalist landscape continues to disappear in the face of new Valencian spaces and the new regional imaginaries they are said to represent. Tracing the historical co-construction of regional politics and place highlights the dynamic importance of the regionalism/landscape dialectic in Europe. Elsewhere I have analyzed the hyper-modern landscapes of entrepreneurial regionalism emerging in Spain. Here I explore the iconographic landscapes that preceded them, revealing the ongoing process by which regional difference can be placed, contested, and perhaps displaced.

Contested memory in the birthplace of a king: a case study of Auburn Avenue and the Martin Luther King Jr. National Park

Inwood, J. F.J. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

A critical element in the process of racializing place is the construction of memorial landscapes. Using the Martin Luther King Jr National Historic Site and the surrounding Auburn Avenue community as a case study this paper argues that the sites dedicated to Dr King along Auburn Avenue embody a normative Civil Rights discourse which emphasizes national unity and non-violence and serves to silence and reframe more radical interpretations of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's social thought and action. More specifically the King National Historic Site represents King as a mainstream leader who used the existing democratic structure of US society to affect social change. This is related to the role the King National Historic Site plays in the construction of hegemony. A critical aspect of this process is the way this normative Civil Rights vision is used to market an understanding of the City of Atlanta. Thus the King memorials along Auburn Avenue are important sites to examine the connections between race, place and nation and the way the memorial landscape dedicated to Dr King embodies particular social values and ideas about the historic legacy of race in the United States.

Living in an artwork: the extraordinary geographies of the Hundertwasser-Haus, 1 Vienna

Kraftl, P. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

In light of current attention to the `everyday', this paper attends to the construction and negotiation of one particular building as an avowedly `extraordinary place'. The paper examines how unusual mixtures of diverse properties (such as `artwork' and `tourist attraction') at the Hundertwasser-Haus in Vienna are always actively and collectively operated such that the house produces and maintains its extraordinariness. Moreover, it forwards the contention that a crucial way in which the extraordinary can be produced is in the meshing of the spectacular with the mundane, everyday and practical, rather than in a separation of the former from the latter. The paper concludes by considering how the complexities of this case study might allow us to reflect upon the critical role of extraordinariness in apprehending the geographies that we take most for granted.

Book review: Geography and vision: seeing, imagining and representing the world. By Denis Cosgrove. London: I.B. Tauris. 2008. xi + 256pp. {pound}16.99 paper. ISBN: 9781850438472

Matless, D. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Book review: Latinos in the New South: transformations of place. Edited by Heather Smith and Owen Furuseth. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2006. 292 pp. {pound}55 cloth. ISBN 0--7546--4454--5

Sundberg, J. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Book review: Geographical imagination and the authority of images. By Denis Cosgrove. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag. 2006. 104 pp. 19. ISBN 978--3--515--08892--3

Vasudevan, A. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Book review: White Creole culture, politics and identity during the age of abolition. By David Lambert. Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005. viii + 245 pp. {pound}50/$88 cloth. ISBN 978--0--521--84131--3

Sheller, M. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Book review: Music and urban geography. By Adam Krims. New York and London: Routledge. 2007. 203 pp. (US) {pound}16.99/$25 paper. ISBN 0--415--97012--1

Long, J. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Book review: Taboo memories, diasporic voices. By Ella Shohat. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. 2006. xxii + 406 pp. $23.95 paperback. ISBN 0--8223--3758--4

Long, J. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Book review: Colonial modernities: building, dwelling and architecture in British India and Ceylon. Edited by Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash. London and New York: Routledge. 2007. ix + 287 pp. {pound}28.99/$50.95 paper. ISBN 9780415399098

Jazeel, T. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Book review: Space, knowledge and power: Foucault and geography. Edited by Jeremy W. Crampton and Stuart Elden. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2007. x + 377 pp. {pound}22.50 paperback. ISBN 978 0 7546 4655 6

Clayton, D. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST

Book review: Highland homecomings: genealogy and heritage tourism in the Scottish diaspora. By Paul Basu. London and New York: Routledge. 2007. 256 pp. {pound}19.95/$44.95 paper. ISBN 1--84472--127--2

Way, H. — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:13:57 PST