Reading Human Geography: The Poetics and Politics of Inquiry

by Derek Gregory (Editor), Trevor J. Barnes

Focusing on post-positive geography, 'Reading Human Geography' makes available in a single volume some of the key texts that have informed its contemporary thought and practice. The readings include some of the most important contributions by geographers to conceptual and methodological debates during the last fifteen years. Paying special attention to writings by human geographers rather than philosophers and other social scientists makes the collection unusually accessible to undergraduates unfamiliar with other vocabularies and other concerns. Editorial introductions to each section draw attention to connections inside and outside the discipline; they provide both a context for and a summary of the essays that follow, together with a detailed bibliography and suggestions for further reading. There is also a glossary and an index.

528 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 1996

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoy the stuff this book talks about although I will not pretend to understand, however, a few nice nuggets from the goldmine of thought it inspires, are what sort of spatial metaphors do we use when discussion "marginalization" and colonization, and what do these metaphors imply and how do they misdirect. Also, another article in here deals with western science attempting to test things in a "non" place, I guess some sort of extreme reductionism, which is likely problematic. And then also using the "poetics" of place, or an interesting paradox between using dense academic language as poetics, in that no single meaning can or should be intended by language, and rather we often dance around ideas, and so writing should reflect this dance, the attempt to define while also leaving inference open to the reader. Again, I need to read more (this is based on the introduction and maybe three articles there-in) but I think geography has some very worthwhile and exciting things to offer any of us living in the world of academia, and also those of us interested in qualitative measures (how do we measure success if not wholely temporally? how should we/ or should we even measure student performance-- and how is that measure informed? etc, etc... I doubt this book directly answers those questions, but it can help if those are questions you have.)