The Power of Place: Bringing Together Geographical and Sociological Imaginations

Routledge Library Editions: Social and Cultural Geography

by John Agnew, James S. Duncan (Editor)

This is an edited volume based on a series of lectures about the importance of locality in social and political science. It reflects the recent revival of interest in a social theory that takes place and space seriously. The essays work around and upon two major the intellectual history of concepts of place and the interpellation of power and place. They do so in different ways. The authors stress, however, that they are not "engaged in the comtemplation of the idiographic" and this work should not be read in this way. They are concerned "with the role of place in social organization and social thought, not as an end in itself".

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Agnew is currently Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1975 until 1995 he was a professor at Syracuse University in New York. Dr. Agnew teaches courses on political geography, the history of geography, European cities, and the Mediterranean World. From 1998 to 2002 he chaired the Department of Geography at UCLA.

He has written widely on questions of territory, place, and political power. He has also worked on issues of "science" in geography and how knowledge is created and circulates in and across places. He is best known for his work completely reinventing "geopolitics" as a field of study and for his theoretical and empirical efforts at showing how national politics is best understood in terms of the geographical dynamics of "places" and how they are made out of both local and long-distance determinants. Much of his empirical research involves Italy, Greece, and the United States.