Geographies of Myth and Places of Identity


Book Description

Introduction -- Notes on Places and People -- List of Illustrations -- 1. The Strait of Homer and the Strait of Reality -- 2. Chronotopes of Hellas: The Grand Tour -- 3. Mediterranean Place-Myths -- 4. Myth of Myths: Mapping the Odyssey -- 5. Materialising Heritage: Tourism in Scilla -- 6. Denizens of the Odyssey -- 7. Conclusions: (Re)-Imagining the Strait -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.




Geographies of Myth and Places of Identity


Book Description

Turning to a region of South Italy associated with Greater Greece and the geographies of Homer's Odyssey, Marco Benoît Carbone delivers a historical and ethnographic treatment of how places defined in public imagination and media by their associated histories become sites of memory and identity, as their landscape and mythologies turn into insignia of a romanticised antiquity. For the ancient Greeks, Homer had set the marine monsters of the Odyssey in the Strait between Calabria and Sicily. Since then, this passage has been glowing with the aura of its mythological landmarks. Travellers and tourists have played Odysseus by re-enacting his journey. Scholars and explorers have explained the myths as metaphors of whirlpools and marine fauna. The iconic Strait and village of Scilla have turned into place-myths and playgrounds, defined by the region's heritage. Carbone observes the enduring impact of Hellas on the real Strait today. The continuous rekindling of cultural and visual traditions of place in the arts, media, travel, and tourism have intersected with philhellenic historiographies, shaping local policies, public histories, views of development, and forms of Hellenicist identitarianism. Elements of society have celebrated the landscape of the Odyssey, appropriated Homer as their imagined heirs, and purported themselves as the original Europeans–pandering to outdated ideological appropriations of 'classical' antiquity and exclusionary, West-centric views of the Mediterranean.




Engaging Film


Book Description

Engaging Film is a creative, interdisciplinary volume that explores the engagements among film, space, and identity and features a section on the use of films in the classroom as a critical pedagogical tool. Focusing on anti-essentialist themes in films and film production, this book examines how social and spatial identities are produced (or dissolved) in films and how mobility is used to create different experiences of time and space. From popular movies such as "Pulp Fiction," "Bulworth," "Terminator 2," and "The Crying Game" to home movies and avant-garde films, the analyses and teaching methods in this collection will engage students and researchers in film and media studies, cultural geography, social theory, and cultural studies.




Myths of Geography


Book Description

Is geography really destiny? Our maps may no longer be stalked by dragons and monsters, but our perceptions of the world are still shaped by geographic myths. Myths like Europe being the center of the world. Or that border walls are the solution to migration. Or that Russia is predestined to threaten its neighbors. In his punchy and authoritative new book, Paul Richardson challenges recent popular accounts of geographical determinism and shows that how the world is represented often isn't how it really is—that the map is not the territory. Along the way we visit some remarkable places: Iceland's Thingvellir National Park, where you can swim between two continents, and Bir Tawil in North Africa, one of the world's only territories not claimed by any country. We follow the first train that ran across Eurasia between Yiwu in east China and Barking in east London, and scale the US-Mexico border wall to find out why such fortifications don’t work. Written with verve and full of quotable facts, Myths of Geography is a book that will turn your world upside down.




World City


Book Description

Cities around the world are striving to be 'global'. This book tells the story of one of them, and in so doing raises questions of identity, place and political responsibility that are essential for all cities. World City focuses its account on London, one of the greatest of these global cities. London is a city of delight and of creativity. It also presides over a country increasingly divided between North and South and over a neo-liberal form of globalisation - the deregulation, financialisation and commercialisation of all aspects of life - that is resulting in an evermore unequal world. World City explores how we can understand this complex narrative and asks a question that should be asked of any city: what does this place stand for? Following the implosion within the financial sector, such issues are even more vital. In a new Preface, Doreen Massey addresses these changed times. She argues that, whatever happens, the evidence of this book is that we must not go back to 'business as usual', and she asks whether the financial crisis might open up a space for a deeper rethinking of both our economy and our society.




Myths and Places


Book Description

This volume explores the dialogic relationship between myths and places in the historically, geographically, and culturally diverse context of India. Given its ambiguous relationship with ‘facts’ and empirical reality, myth has suffered an uncertain status in the field of professional history, with the latter’s preference for scientifism over more creative orders of representation. Myths and Places rehabilitates myth, not as history’s primeval ‘Other’, nor as an instrument of socio-religious propagation, but as communitarian mechanisms by which societies made sense of themselves and their world. It argues that myths helped communities fashion their identities and their habitat/habitus, and were fashioned by these in turn. This book explores diverse forms of territorial becoming and belonging in a grassroots approach from across India, studying them in culturally sensitive ways to recover local life-worlds and their self-understanding. Further, challenging the stereotypical bracketing of the mythical with the sacred and the material with the historical, the multidisciplinary essays in the book examine myth in relation to not only religion but other historical phenomena such as ecology, ethnicity, urbanism, mercantilism, migration, politics, tourism, art, philosophy, performance, and the everyday. This book will be of interest to scholars and general readers of Indian history, regional studies, cultural geography, mythology, religious studies, and anthropology.




Human Geography of the UK


Book Description

This new key textbook for introductory courses in human geography provides first and second-year undergraduates with a comprehensive thematic approach to the changing human geography of the UK at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century. Covering local, regional, national, European and global issues, it also explores in some detail topics which are part of the lived experience of undergraduates themselves, such as crime, unemployment, social exclusion and AIDS. User-friendly textbook features include: * chapter introductions, summaries and important theoretical principles * up-to-date further reading and key on-line sources * case studies, examples and revision questions.




Geographies of Myth and Places of Identity


Book Description

"Turning to a region of South Italy associated with the heritage of Greater Greece and the geographies of Homer's Odyssey, Marco Benoît Carbone delivers a historical and ethnographic treatment of how places defined in public imagination and media by force of their associated historical events become sites of memory and identity, as their landscape, heritage, and mythologies turn into insignia of a romanticised antiquity. For the ancient Greeks, Homer had set the marine monsters of the Odyssey in the Strait between Calabria and Sicily. Since then, this Mediterranean passage has been glowing with the literary aura of its mythological landmarks. Travellers and tourists have played Odysseus by re-enacting his journey. Scholars and explorers have explained the myths as metaphors of whirlpools and marine fauna. The iconic Strait and village of Scilla have turned into chrono-topic place-myths and playgrounds, defined by their literary aura and the region's ancient heritage inspiring representations in media, travels and tourism. Carbone observes the enduring impact of Hellas on the real Strait today. The fascinations of artists and travellers, and their continuous rekindling of cultural and visual traditions of place have intersected withphilhellenic Western historiographies, shaping local policies, public histories, views of development and tourism, and forms of Hellenicist identitarianism. Elements of society have celebrated the landscape of the Odyssey, appropriated Homer as their imagined heirs and fellow citizen, and even purported themselves as the original Europeans, thus pandering to outdated ideological appropriations of 'classical' antiquity and exclusionary, West-centric views of the Mediterranean"--




International Encyclopedia of Human Geography


Book Description

International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Second Edition, Fourteen Volume Set embraces diversity by design and captures the ways in which humans share places and view differences based on gender, race, nationality, location and other factors—in other words, the things that make people and places different. Questions of, for example, politics, economics, race relations and migration are introduced and discussed through a geographical lens. This updated edition will assist readers in their research by providing factual information, historical perspectives, theoretical approaches, reviews of literature, and provocative topical discussions that will stimulate creative thinking. Presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive coverage on the topic of human geography Contains extensive scope and depth of coverage Emphasizes how geographers interact with, understand and contribute to problem-solving in the contemporary world Places an emphasis on how geography is relevant in a social and interdisciplinary context




Places on the Margin


Book Description

The debate on modernity and postmodernity has awakened interest in the importance of the spatial for cultural formations. But what of those spaces that exist as much in the imagination as in physical reality? This book attempts to develop an alternative geography and sociology of space by examining `places on the margin'.