1. Topographies of
Culture:
Geography,
Meaning and
Power

2. Geography - the study of the systems
and processes involved in the world's
weather, mountains, seas, lakes, etc.
and of the ways in which countries
and people organize life within an
area.
Topography - the physical appearance
of the natural features of an area of
land, especially the shape of its surface

3. One increasing important aspect
of cultural studies can be called
the geographies (or, indeed,
topographies) of culture: the
ways in which matters of
meaning are bound up with
spaces, places and landscapes.

4. This chapter aims to use a
variety of examples, both
historical and contemporary,
to show the ways in which
issues of culture and
meaning are geographical.

5. What is
CULTURAL
GEOGRAPHY?

6. Cultural geography is the study of the many
cultural aspects found throughout the world
and how they relate to the spaces and places
where they originate and then travel as
people continually move across various
areas. Some of the main cultural
phenomena studied in cultural geography
include language, religion, different
economic and governmental structures, art,
music, and other cultural aspects that
explain how and/or why people function as
they do in areas where they live.

7. • contemporary as well as historical
• concerned with space as well as
landscape
• urban as well as rural
• concerned with relations of
domination and resistance
• assertive of the centrality of culture
to human life
• concerned with ―representation‖ as
much as ―reality‖

8. Cultural geography should
not be ―rural and
antiquarian‖, and it
shouldn‘t be concerned with
―physical artifacts‖ or
―cultural areas‖.

9. Placenames:
Interaction,
Power and
Representation

10. The first position set out above that
culture is the meanings that are
made by people through social
interactions and relations suggest
that the naming of places is a
matter of people giving meaning to
them by naming them in ways
which are shaped by their
interactions.

11. Placenames had certain
characteristics: they were
local, based around the
everyday activities of the
city‘s working people, and
they were often part of a
rude, earthy popular culture

12. Yet there is more to this than
just ―social interaction‖. The
2nd position of the new cultural
geography states that the
processes of making cultural
meanings of space, place, and
landscapes are matters or
power and resistance…

13. Giving a place a name is an
act of claiming ownership,
defining what a place is,
who it belongs to, and what
it means.

14. • patriotic and historical names
• nordic mythology
• famous places near the city
• the southern provinces
• the northern provinces
• famous swedish authors
• prominent men within
technology and engineering

15. The 3rd position is that
meanings are made through
processes of representation.
Each placename represents
a place in particular way,
emphasizing certain things
and obscuring others.

16. There was a recognition of the
meanings of placenames being
made through social interaction in
place, the politics involved in the
struggle for their continued
existence, and in the power of these
names as representations of places
that could unite as well as divide
the people in it.

17. Landscape
Representation

18. The original meaning of the word
landscape is 'a picture representing
an area of countryside.' So when
talking about landscape, what
comes into mind is a visual
depiction of a certain sort: a
landscape painting created
according to the principles of the
―picturesque‖.

19. A central characteristic of the
often ambiguous term
―landscape‖ is that it is first a
schema, a representation, a
way of seeing the external
world, and, based on one's
point of view, such schemata
vary significantly.

21. Therefore, this mode of
landscape representation
presented the life of the
landowners and their
power in 18th century
England.

22. However, this argument is a
little to simple for 4 reasons.
First, it is important to situate
paintings such as Mr. & Mrs.
Andrews within the range of
forms of landscape depiction in
18th century England and as
they changed over time.

23. Other examples are the
poetry of John Clare,
which sought to give the
poor and dispossessed a
place in the landscape.

24. Second, there was a
continual and increasing
challenge to the political
ideology of land and land
ownership from the
growing towns and cities.

25. This means that the
landowners are
represented not in terms
of independence and
objectivity, but corruption
and selfishness.

26. Third, this isn‘t just about
class. While Mr. & Mrs.
Andrews can be divided into
two halves (the possessor
and the possessed), there is
a debate where the line
should be drawn.

27. Finally, the history of this
form of landscape
representation isn‘t
simply confined to
England.

28. It is, however, important
to remember that the
process of representation
and interpretation
continues as different
positions are taken in
contest to make meaning.

30. Here, the couple are
disconnected from their
landscape. They are
headless and properlyless
aristocrats after the
revolution.

31. National
Identity

32. National identity is the
person's identity and sense
of belonging to one state or
to one nation, a feeling one
shares with a group of
people, regardless of one's
citizenship status.

33. Often, peoples‘ identities
are constructed in
relation to places. They
say that they are Los
Angelenos, Parisians, or
Paulistanos.

34. They also construct
their identities at the
level of neighborhoods
within cities, or even
particular streets.

35. According to Benedict
Anderson, a nation is
defined as a political
economy that is “imagined
as both inherently limited
and sovereign.”

36. First, ―It is imagined because
the members of even the
smallest nation will never
know most of their fellow
members, meet them, or even
hear of them, yet in the minds
of each lives the image of
their communion.

37. Second, it is imagined as
limited because not even the
largest nation imagines that
it could include all human
kind. They exist in a world
of nations, all similar but
different.

38. Finally, the nation is
imagined as sovereign. It‘s
the central principle of
nationalism that the nation
should determine its own
destiny. To do so, each nation
should have its own state.

39. Nations use public
monuments and memorials to
give meaning to space. This is
often done in opposition to
colonial rule. For example,
the construction of landscapes
in Dublin, and its subsequent
destruction.

40. Discourses
of
Orientalism

41. It means that there is no
ultimate truth, but only
systems of knowledge which
is produced by people to
explain what is out there in
the world.

42. ESSENTIALISM
is the view that, for any
specific group of people,
there is a set of incidental
attributes all of which are
necessary to its identity and
function

43. Orientalism is a term used by art
historians and literary and
cultural studies scholars for the
imitation or depiction of aspects
of Middle Eastern, and East
Asian cultures (Eastern cultures)
by American and European
writers, designers and artists.

44. Since the publication of Edward
Said's Orientalism in 1978, much
academic discourse has begun to
use the term "Orientalism" to
refer to a general patronizing
Western attitude towards Middle
Eastern, Asian and North
African societies.

45. In Said's analysis, the West
essentializes these societies as static
and undeveloped—thereby
fabricating a view of Oriental
culture that can be studied, depicted,
and reproduced. Implicit in this
fabrication, writes Said, is the idea
that Western society is developed,
rational, flexible, and superior.

46. In the process, these
geographical essentialisms
severely limit what those on
either side of the divisions
can be, and what sorts of
relationship can be formed
between them.

47. Mobility,
Hybridity
and
Heterogeneity

48. Mobile – able to move freely
or able to be easily moved.
Hybrid - anything that is a
mixture of two very different
things.

49. Heterogeneous
Consisting of parts or things
that are very different from
each other

50. This part is a broader
development of a notion of
―cultures of travel‖ or
―traveling cultures‖ that
tries to understand
movement itself as the
subject of cultural studies.

51. James Clifford has argued
that anthropology has been far
more concerned with
―dwelling‖ (being in one place)
than ―traveling‖. There has
been a tendency to see what
stays put as normal, and what
moves as peculiar.

52. Mary Louise Pratt has argued
that mobility takes the traveler
into a contact zone: ‗social
space where disparate cultures
meet, clash, and grapple with
each other, often in highly
asymmetrical relations of
domination and subordination.

54. The meeting of cultural
meanings leaves both sides
changed as something new is
produced. Pratt avoids ideas of
‗acculturation‘ or
‗deculturation‘ and uses the
term ‗transculturation‘ to
capture this two-way process.

55. Others have talked about
‗hybridization‘: the production
of something that is both made
up of the elements that meet,
yet different from them too.
This means that they can at
times work to subvert or disrupt
colonial power in various ways

56. We also have to think where the contact
zone is. The process of imperialism
meant that British culture was made
hybrid in fundamental ways. A simple
example is the humble cup of tea. This
came to be a sign of Britishness in the
18th century, but was made of leaves from
China, India, or Sri Lanka, sweetened
with sugar from Caribbean plantations
worked by African slave labor.

57. Extending the example of tea to think
further about food and drink reveals
different ways in which this increase
of hybrid, mobilities and flows can be
conceptualized. It is familiar sight in
European and American
supermarkets to see papaya from
Jamaica, green beans from Kenya,
and bananas from Ecuador.

58. The meanings that are made
for food are made by a whole
range of people. There are
those who want to encourage
the consumption of particular
foods by making them trendy,
healthy, and exotic.

59. There are those who want to
stop consumption of other
food by giving them
meanings that stress how
they are unethical, unhealthy
or associated with the wrong
people, places or taste.

60. Whatever is eaten, wherever
it is eaten, and whoever it is
eaten with says something
about the diners. Eating
always involves making
interpretation of meanings
and choices about identity.

61. One concern is that people‘s
diets and tastes are
becoming globally
homogenized (and that
means ‗Americanized‘)
because of the dominance
of global foods.

63. However, looking more closely at the
ways in which people make their
identities in relation to such global
foods reveals that they do so in
different ways. On the one hand, they
have had very positive connotations
in certain contexts. Elsewhere, the
same food and drink have very
negative implications.

64. For example, when the first
McDonalds was opened in Moscow
after the fall of Soviet Union,
people queued for hours to sample
what they saw the taste of
democracy and freedom. Among
young British-Asian in fast food
carried with it meanings of
progress, modernity, and freedom.

65. For the negative view, there are
campaigns of environmentalist and anti-
fast food and anti-globalization
protestors. The Indian Parliament
banned Coca-Cola from its cafeterias in
2004 because of reports of its damaging
environmental effects, and a charity-
business selling drink called Mecca-Cola
has been set up to encourage Muslims to
reject the materialist capitalism of Coke.

66. Consumers make their identities
in relation to local food, which
lead to the creation of ‗Italian
food‘, ‗Thai food‘, ‗Chinese
food‘, ‗Indian food‘, etc. These
foods become separate, fixed, and
sealed off cultural entities which
are to be preserved as authentic.

67. However, the ideas of mobility and
hybridity soon make it clear that this
cannot be true. Think about potatoes
– a staple of the Northern European
diet – originally coming from the
Americas. Thinking about chilies – a
fundamental part of cuisines of
Thailand, India, Lebanon, and Italy –
again coming from the U.S.

68. Avtar Brah (1996) has argued that
instead of making a distinction
between those who have moved
(diasporians) and those who have
stayed put (natives), we should
recognize that everyone inhabits
‗diaspora space‘ and has to face the
cultural issues that are involved in it.

69. Performing
Identities

70. It is evident that people‘s
identities are produced through
continuous and active
relationships to other people and
places. It can be said that people
make choices of how to ‗perform‘
their identities depending on
where they are and who they are
with.

71. In part people are in control
of these performances, and
actively construct their
identities through these
performances and props
(clothes, hair, make-up, etc)
that support them.

72. However, it is also the case that
these performances are also
shaped (consciously &
unconsciously) by the expectation
of other people and by the settings
in which these performances take
place.

73. These are individual: people
are expected to maintain some
continuity of personality. These
performances are also social
and cultural: there are
expectations in terms of roles –
son, employee, or a friend; in
terms of gender, class, race;

79. Some discussions of
performance treat it very
directly as ‗theater‘.
Performers artfully use a series
of masks, costumes, and
scripts, and the different spaces
are the stages on which these
performances take place.

80. All in all, identities are not
something that pre-exist
what people do. They are
what they do. Identities are
made in action. There are,
however, quite different
ways of understanding this.

81. Living in a
Material
World

82. In cultural studies, what is of
interest are the meaningful
relationships between people
and objects. This is a matter
of what objects mean to
people, but also what people
do with those objects.

83. Nicholas Thomas demonstrates
how the islanders of the Pacific
appropriated European objects.
So European guns become part
of local politics and gift giving,
and were changed in the process
through local techniques of
woodworking and inlaying.

84. But he also demonstrates how
islanders‘ objects, such as
weapons, cloth, and tools were
appropriated by Europeans. This
also changed their meaning by
incorporating into cultures of
collecting and the practices of
gift giving of Europeans.

85. The cultural appropriations of
objects are made in specific
contexts and involve the
making of the meaning of
places and with it the making
of identities. One clear example
is home decoration and DIY.

89. Overall, therefore, nature and
culture are inseparable in both
the making of social and
cultural formations through
technological and natural
―objects‖ and the ordering of
nature through science.