Cultural Landscapes (GE3224)


Semester I, 2001/2002

Lecturer: Dr. Tim Bunnell, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore


Aims and Objectives

1. To explore the contribution of Cultural Geography to the understanding of landscape, space and culture.

2. To give students a critical appreciation of the cultural construction and work of landscapes in various media.


Prerequisites

None


Schedule

Lectures: Thursday 10 -12 in AS4/01-04

First lecture: 2 August

No lecture on: 9 August (National Day); 6 September (Recess week)

Rearranged lecture: Friday 21 September (to be confirmed)

Examination: Saturday 17th November (am)

Tutorials: Fridays 9-10, 10-11 or 11-12 in AS2/02-03

Have cultural geographers' conceptions of 'human-environment relations' changed over the course of the past century? If so, how?

Project planning and discussion

Select one example of how 'cultural others' are represented in any medium (e.g. film, TV, magazines, literature, exhibitions, music etc.). Drawing upon Edward Said's concept of 'imaginative geographies', discuss the power relations involved in your chosen act of representation.

Action research: Identify any site, conduct or artefact that you consider to be 'out of place' in contemporary Singapore. Record this in any means you see fit and be prepared to discuss and justify your choice. Please do not break the law or cause offence in the process!

Project update

If you were to draw up a module on cultural geography to be taught at tertiary level, what are the key issues and themes that would go into it? (it must not look like the one I have devised for you!)


Synopsis

Cultural Geography has made a distinctive contribution to the understanding of relations between landscape, space and culture. Cultural Landscapes explores this contribution in two ways. First, is a focus on the conceptual underpinnings of cultural geography (for example, notions of culture, landscape and power). Second, is through a thematic approach to cultural landscapes in a variety of historical and geographical settings. The module thus plots a course which ranges from imaginative geographies of exploration and travel writing to high-rise cityscapes and national identity, to the cultures of cyberspace and the virtual landscape.


Syllabus

The thirteen weeks of lectures break down into two broad sections. The first, 'Conceptual Concerns', consists of three weeks of lectures and the second, 'A Thematic Approach', consists of eight. The remaining two weeks are for project presentations and a summary/revision class at the end of the course.

SECTION 1: CONCEPTUAL CONCERNS

SECTION 2: A THEMATIC APPROACH

(a). IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHIES

(b). THE NATION

(c). MORAL GEOGRAPHIES

(d). CULTURAL DETERRITORIALISATION?


Assessment

Group written assignment and project presentation (30%)

Tutorial participation and class exercises (10%)

Examination (60%)

Group Project:


Text and References

1 (a). TRADITIONAL AND 'NEW' CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY

Barnett, C. (1998) The cultural turn: fashion or progress in human geography?, Antipode 30 (4): 379-394.

Cosgrove, D. (1993) On The reinvention of cultural geography by Price and Lewis, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83 (1): 515-517.

Cosgrove, D. and Jackson, P. (1987) New directions in cultural geography, Area 19 (2): 95-101.

Duncan, J. (1993) Commentary, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83 (3): 517-19.

Jackson, P. (1989) Maps of Meaning. London: Unwin Hyman (esp. 9-24).

Jackson, P. (1993) Berkeley and beyond: broadening the horizons of cultural geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83 (3): 519-20.

Kong, L. (1997) A 'new' cultural geography? Debates about inventions and reinvention, Scottish Geographical Magazine 113 (3): 177-185.

Mitchell, D. (2000) Culture wars: culture is politics by another name, Chapter 1 in Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 3-36.

Price, M. and Lewis, M. (1993) The reinvention of cultural geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83 (1): 1-17.

Price, M. and Lewis, M. (1993) Reply: On reading cultural geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83 (3): 520-22. 1

(b). CONCEPTS AND SCOPE

Anderson, K. (1987) The idea of Chinatown: the power of place and institutional practice in the making of a racial category, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77 (4), 580-98.

Anderson, K. and Gale, F. (1992) Introduction, in K. Anderson and F. Gale (eds.) Inventing Places: Studies in Cultural Geography, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, pp. 1-12.

Duncan, J. and Duncan, N. (1989) (Re)reading the landscape, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 6: 117-126.

Daniels, S. (1989) Marxism, culture and the duplicity of landscape, in R. Peet and N. Thrift (eds.), New Models in Geography vol. 2, pp. 196-220.

Daniels, S. and Cosgrove, D. (1988) Iconography and Landscape, in D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels, The Iconography of Landscape, pp. 1-10.

Domosh, M. (1989) A method for interpreting landscape: A case study of the New York World Building, Area 21 (4): 347-55.

Jacobs, J. M. (1999) The labour of cultural geography, chapter 2 in Elaine Stratford (ed.) Australian Cultural Geographies. Victoria: Oxford University Press, pp. 11-24.

Kong, L. and Yeoh, B. (1997) The construction of national identity through the production of ritual and spectacle: an analysis of National Day parades in Singapore, Political Geography 16 (3): 213-39.

Mitchell, D. (2000) Cultural studies and the new cultural geography. Chapter 2 in Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 37-65.

Tuan, Yi-Fu (1975) Place: An experiential perspective, The Geographical Review 55 (2): 151-165.

2 (a). IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHIES

Bhattacharyya, G. (2000) Metropolis of the Midlands. In Balshaw, M. and Kennedy, L. (eds.) Urban Space and Representation. London: Pluto, pp. 162-174.

Brosseau, M. (1994) Geography's literature, Progress in Human Geography 18 (3): 333-53.

Chang, T. C. (1997) From 'instant Asia' to 'Multi-faceted jewel': urban imaging strategies and tourism development in Singapore, Urban Geography 18 (6): 542-62.

Cresswell, T. (1993) Mobility as resistance: A geographical reading of Kerouac's On the Road, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 18: 249-262.

Daniels, S. and Rycroft, S. (1993) Mapping the modern city: Alan Sillitoe's Nottingham novels, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 18 (4): 460-480.

Driver, F. (1991) Geography's empire: histories of geographical knowledge, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10 (1): 23-40.

Driver, F. (2001) Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers (esp. chapter 1, pp. 1-23).

Garland, A. (1997) The Beach. London: Penguin, pp. 5-34.

King, A. D. (1996) Worlds in the city: Manhattan transfer and the ascendance of spectacular space, Planning Perspectives 11: 97-114.

McEwan, C. (1996) Paradise or pandemonium? West African landscapes in the travel accounts of Victorian women, Journal of Historical Geography 22: 68-83.

McLeay, C. (1995) Musical words, musical worlds: geographic imagery in the music of U2, New Zealand Geographer 51 (2): 1-6.

Pocock, D. C. D. (1988) Geography and literature, Progress in Human Geography 12 (1): 87-102.

Said, E. (1995; originally, 1978) Imaginative geography and its representations: Orientalizing the Oriental. In Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin, pp. 49-73.

Sioh, M. (1998) Authorizing the Malaysian rainforest: configuring space, contesting claims and conquering imaginaries, Ecumene vol. 5, no. 2 (pp. 144-66).

Squire, S. (1988) Wordsworth and Lake District Tourism: Romantic Shaping of the Landscape, Canadian Geographer 32 (3): 237-47.

Thongchai Winichakul (1994) Mapping: A New Technology of Space. In Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. Hawaii: University of Honolulu Press, pp. 113-127.

2 (b). THE NATION

Crang, M. (2000) Between academy and popular geographies: Cartographic imaginations and the cultural landscape of Sweden. In Ian Cook et al. (eds.) Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns. Harlow: Pearson Education, pp. 88-108.

Daniels, S. (1993) Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the United States. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 11-42.

Johnson, N. (1995) Cast in stone: monuments, geography and nationalism, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13: 51-65.

Kinsman, P. (1995) Landscape, race and national identity: The photography of Ingrid Pollard, Area 27: 300-310.

Kusno, A. (2000) Modern architecture and traditional polity: Jakarta in the time of Sukarno. In Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space and Political Cultures in Indonesia. London: Routledge, pp. 49-71.

MacDonald, G. (1995) Indonesia's Medan-Merdeka - National identity and the built environment, Antipode 27(3): 270-293.

Seymour, S and Watkins, C. (1995) Church, landscape and community: rural life and the Church of England, Landscape Research 20: 30-44. 2

(c). MORAL GEOGRAPHIES

Cresswell, T. (1996) In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 3-27.

Davis, M. (1992) Fortress Los Angeles: The militarization of urban space. In M. Sorkin (ed.) Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 154-180.

Driver, F. (1988) Moral geographies: social science and the urban environment in mid 19th century England, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 13: 275-287.

Halfacree, K. (1996) Out of place in the country: Travellers and the rural idyll', Antipode 28 (1): 42-72.

Matless, D. (1994) Moral geography in Broadland, Ecumene 1 (2): 127-155.

Matless, D. (1995) The art of right living: landscape and citizenship 1918-39. In S. Pile and N. Thrift (eds.) Mapping the Subject. London: Routledge, pp. 93-122.

Matless, D. (1997) Moral geographies of landscape, Landscape Research 22 (2): 141-155.

Sibley, D. (1988) Purification of space, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 6: 409-421.

Sibley, D. (1995) Geographies of Exclusion. London: Routledge, pp. 49-71.

Sibley, D. (1997) Endangering the sacred: Nomads, youth cultures and the English countryside. In P. Cloke and J. Little (eds.) Contested Countryside Cultures: Otherness, Marginalisation and Rurality. London: Routledge.

2 (d). DETERRITORIALISATION?

Berman, M. (1983) All That is Solid Melts into Air. London: Verso.

Burrows, R. (1997) Virtual culture, urban social polarisation and social science fiction. In Loader, B. (ed.) The Governance of Cyberspace. London: Routledge, pp. 38-45.

Cosgrove, D. (1994) Contested global visions: One-world, whole-earth and the Apollo space photographs. Annals of the Association of American Geographer 84, 2: 270-294.

Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. (2001) Mapping Cyberspace. London: Routledge (esp. chapters 2 & 3, pp. 32-64).

Foster, D. (1997) Community and identity in the Electronic Village. In Porter, D. (ed.) Internet Culture. London: Routledge, pp. 23-38.

Graham, S. and Aurigi, A. (1997) Virtual cities, social polarization and the crisis in urban public space, Journal of Urban Technology 4 (1): 1-27.

Jones, S. G. (1998) Information, Internet and community: notes towards an understanding of community in the information age. In Jones (ed.) Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting Computer-mediated communication and community. Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 1-34.

Kneale, J. (1999) The virtual realities of technology and fiction: reading William Gibson's cyberspace. In Mike Crang et al. (eds.) Virtual Geographies: Bodies, Space and Relations. London: Routledge, pp. 205-221.

Mitchell, W. J. (1996) City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (esp. 107-133).

Pred, A. (1995) ReCognizing European Modernities. London: Routledge, pp. 175-255.

Smith, M. P. (2001) Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 72-98.

Soja, E. (2000) Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford: Blackwell (esp. chapters 7 & 10, pp. 189-232; 298-322).

Stratton, J. (2000) Cyberspace and the Globalization of Culture. In D. Bell (ed.) The Cybercultures Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 721-731.

Ziauddin Sardar (1995) Cyberspace as the darker side of the West, Futures 27 (7), pp. 777-794.

Zukin, S. (1991) Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World. Berkeley and Los Angeles. University of California Press (esp. chapters 1 -3, pp. 3-54).


Last Modified: 4 February 2002