Phobic Geographies


Book Description

Despite recent estimates that there are currently 10 million people in the UK suffering from phobias, there is a substantial and conspicuous gap in existing academic literature and research on this topic. This book addresses this gap in relation to geography literature, but also extending beyond this field to connect with a wide range of academics, health professionals and phobic 'others' whose ideas are (re)formed by fear. In doing so, it provides non-clinical, specifically geographical insights into phobia, of relevance for its sufferers and expands human geographical understandings of the relations between gender, embodiment, space and mental health, via a study of agoraphobia. This book argues that a critical geographic perspective is better placed to take account of the importance of wider social contexts and relations, and can give a fully spatialised account of the disorder more faithful to the way sufferers actually describe their experiences. By drawing attention to some of the more unusual ways that people relate to each other, and to their environments, we can illuminate some ordinarily taken for granted aspects of personal geographies.




Anxious Geographies


Book Description

Anxious Geographies offers a unique perspective on social anxiety, framing it as both a social and spatial phenomenon. Through a meticulous exploration using online questionnaires and interviews, the book provides a crucial examination of the intricacies of anxious lives. This book presents a critical intervention in the experience of mental health in 21st-century society and provides a compelling geographical account of the underpinnings of the anxious experience. The book pivots on the in-depth perspectives of people with social anxiety, diagnosed or “sub-clinical”, but with an academic commentary that relates their experience to the medicalisation of a disrupted relational life, offering lessons for all of us in modern societies. Each chapter considers a unique aspect of social anxiety accounting for the social, spatial, temporal, relational and embodied dynamics, a geographical approach that enriches our understanding of the contexts and conditions that exacerbate and sustain anxious distress. The phenomenological descriptions herein, capture how social anxiety can profoundly alter a person’s coherent, habitual and embodied sense of being in and navigating through their social and spatial worlds. Through the experiential accounts of anxious distress and by considering the social contexts in which they emerge, this book provides readers with crucial insights into the hidden lives of those living with social anxiety. This book will be of appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of human geography and across the social sciences and humanities. It will also provide useful insights for academics and health professionals in social psychiatry, social psychology, counselling studies and therapeutic practice.




Towards Enabling Geographies


Book Description

Over the past 15 years, geography has made many significant contributions to our understanding of disabled people's identities, lives, and place in society and space. 'Towards Enabling Geographies' brings together leading scholars to showcase the 'second wave' of geographical studies concerned with disability and embodied differences. This area has broadened and challenged conventional boundaries of 'disability', expanding the kinds of embodied differences considered, while continuing to grapple with important challenges such as policy relevance and the use of more inclusionary research approaches. This book demonstrates the value of a spatial conceptualization of disability and disablement to a broader social science audience, whilst examining how this conceptualization can be further developed and refined.




A Companion to Social Geography


Book Description

This volume traces the complexity of social geography in both its historical and present contexts, whilst challenging readers to reflect critically on the tensions that run through social geographic thought. Organized to provide a new set of conceptual lenses through which social geographies can be discussed Presents an original intervention into the debates about social geography Highlights the importance of social geography within the broader field of geography




A Companion to Feminist Geography


Book Description

A Companion to Feminist Geography captures the breadth anddiversity of this vibrant and substantive field. Shows how feminist geography has changed the landscape ofgeographical inquiry and knowledge since the 1970s. Explores the diverse literatures that comprise feministgeography today. Showcases cutting-edge research by feminist geographers. Charts emerging areas of scholarship, such as the body and thenation. Contributions from 50 leading international scholars in thefield. Each chapter can be read for its own distinctivecontribution.




International Encyclopedia of Human Geography


Book Description

The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography provides an authoritative and comprehensive source of information on the discipline of human geography and its constituent, and related, subject areas. The encyclopedia includes over 1,000 detailed entries on philosophy and theory, key concepts, methods and practices, biographies of notable geographers, and geographical thought and praxis in different parts of the world. This groundbreaking project covers every field of human geography and the discipline’s relationships to other disciplines, and is global in scope, involving an international set of contributors. Given its broad, inclusive scope and unique online accessibility, it is anticipated that the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography will become the major reference work for the discipline over the coming decades. The Encyclopedia will be available in both limited edition print and online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit http://info.sciencedirect.com/content/books/ref_works/coming/ Available online on ScienceDirect and in limited edition print format Broad, interdisciplinary coverage across human geography: Philosophy, Methods, People, Social/Cultural, Political, Economic, Development, Health, Cartography, Urban, Historical, Regional Comprehensive and unique - the first of its kind in human geography




Understanding Cultural Geography


Book Description

This new and comprehensive book offers a holistic introduction to cultural geography. It integrates the broad range of theories and practices of the discipline by arguing that the essential focus of cultural geography is place. The book builds an accessible and engaging configuration of this important concept through arguing that place should be understood as an ongoing composition of traces. The book presents specific chapters outlining the history of cultural geography, before and beyond representation, as well as the methods and techniques of doing cultural geography. It investigates the places and traces of corporate capitalism, nationalism, ethnicity, youth culture and the place of the body. Throughout these chapters case study examples will be used to illustrate how these places are taken and made by particular cultures, examples include the Freedom Tower in New York City, the Berlin Wall, the Gaza Strip, Banksy graffiti, and anti-capitalist protest movements. The book discusses the role of power in cultural place-making, as well as the ethical dimensions of doing cultural geography. Understanding Cultural Geography: Places and Traces offers a broad-based overview of cultural geography, ideal for students being introduced to the discipline through either undergraduate or postgraduate degree courses. The book outlines how the theoretical ideas, empirical foci and methodological techniques of cultural geography illuminate and make sense of the places we inhabit and contribute to. This is a timely synthesis that aims to incorporate a vast knowledge foundation and by doing so it will also prove invaluable for lecturers and academics alike.




The SAGE Handbook of Social Geographies


Book Description

"With clarity and confidence, this vibrant volume summons up 'the social' in geography in ways that will excite students and scholars alike. Here the social is populated not only by society, but by culture, nature, economy and politics." - Kay Anderson, University of Western Sydney "This is a remarkable collection, full of intellectual gems. It not only summarises the field of social geography, and restates its importance, but also produces a manifesto for how the field should look in the future." - Nigel Thrift, Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick "The book aims to be accessible to students and specialists alike. Its success lies in emphasizing the crossovers between geography and social studies. The good editorial work is evident and the participating contributors are well-established scholars in their respective fields." - Miron M. Denan, Geography Research Forum "An excellent handbook that will attract a diversity of readers. It will inspire undergraduate/postgraduate students and stimulate lecturers/researchers interested in the complexity and diversity of the social realm.... As the first of its kind in the sub-discipline, it is a book that is enjoyable to read and will definitely add value to a personal or library collection." - Michele Lobo, New Zealand Geographer The social relations of difference - from race and class to gender and inequality - are at the heart of the concept of social geography. This handbook reconsiders and redirects research in the discipline while examining the changing ideas of individuals and their relationship with structures of power. Organised into five sections, the SAGE Handbook of Social Geographies maps out the 'connections' anchored in social geography. Difference and Diversity builds on enduring ideas of the structuring of social relations and examines the ruptures and rifts, and continuities and connections around social divisions. Geographies and Social Economies rethinks the sociality, subjectivity and placement of money, markets, price and value. Geographies of Wellbeing builds from a foundation of work on the spaces of fear, anxiety and disease towards newer concerns with geographies of health, resilience and contentment. Geographies of Social Justice connects ideas through an examination of the possibilities and practicalities of normative theory and frames the central notion of Social geography, that things always could and should be different. Doing Social Geography is not exploring the 'how to' of research, but rather the entanglement of it with practicalities, moralities, and politics. This will be an essential resource for academics, researchers, practitioners and postgraduates across human geography.




Taking-Place: Non-Representational Theories and Geography


Book Description

Emerging over the past ten years from a set of post-structuralist theoretical lineages, non-representational theories are having a major impact within Human Geography. Non-representational theorisation and research has opened up new sets of problematics around the body, practice and performativity and inspired new ways of doing and writing human geography that aim to engage with the taking-place of everyday life. Drawing together a range of innovative contributions from leading writers, this is the first book to provide an extensive and in-depth overview of non-representational theories and human geography. The work addresses the core themes of this still-developing field, demonstrates the implications of non-representational theories for many aspects of human geographic thought and practice, and highlights areas of emergent critical debate. The collection is structured around four thematic sections - Life, Representation, Ethics and Politics - which explore the varied relations between non-representational theories and contemporary human geography.




Dissonant Heritages and Memories in Contemporary Europe


Book Description

This open access book discusses political, economic, social, and humanitarian challenges that influence both how people deal with their past and how they build their identities in contemporary Europe. Ongoing debates on migration, on local, national, inter- and transnational levels, prove that it is a divisive issue with regards to understanding European integration and identity. At the same time, the European Union increasingly invests in projects related to European heritage, museums, and cultural memory networks, while having to take dissonant heritages into account. These processes in their combination offer an interesting dynamic and form the complex puzzle that poses challenging questions for anyone involved in academic research, heritage practices, and policy debates. With this puzzle at its core, this book explicitly focuses on slippery and transforming notions of Europe and critically discusses ongoing and transforming power structures of heritage and memory in today’s Europe. The book combines theoretical and methodological contributions to the debates on European heritage and memory studies and in-depth analyses of empirical case studies. Its main aim is to bring research fields concerning memory and heritage into a closer dialogue and thus explore the cultural and political dynamics of contemporary Europe.