Geographic Thought and Theory
Reading list for January 2012
Compiled by Marianna Pavlovskaya
(Based on EES709 by Neil Smith and David Harvey)
Unmarked – in Smith only; ^ in Harvey only, * in both
History of geography/empire
*Felix Driver, Geography Militant. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2001
[A critical analysis of geography‟s role in colonialism with a special focus on Britain]
*David Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992.
[An episodic intellectual history of European geography from the 18th century up to 1945]
*Anne Godlewska and Neil Smith, eds. Geography and Empire. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994.
[a series of essays covering the relationship of geography as a discipline and imperial power, from
Europe, North America and Japan]
Geoffrey Martin and Preston James, All Possible Worlds. New York: Wiley, 3rd Edn. 2005
[A highly descriptive, rather hagiographic, survey of geography and geographers from “the
classical period” to the mid-20th century. A factual reference work]
^Pattison, W.D., 1964. The four traditions of geography, National Council for Geographic
Education. Reprinted from the Journal of Geography, 1964, pp. 211–216.
^Harvey, D. “Geographical Knowledges/Political Powers,” Proceedings of the British Academy,
122, 2004, 87-115.
^George Tatham, 1956 "Environmentalism and Possibilism" in Griffith Taylor, (ed) Geography in
the Twentieth Century (London: Butler and Tanner).
^Karl A. Wittfogel (1956), 'The Hydraulic Civilizations', in William L. Thomas, Jr. (ed.), Man's
Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 152-64 [13].
David Livingstone, “Should the History of Geography be X-rated,” The Geographical Tradition.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992, chapter 1;
Neil Smith, “The Lost Geography of the American Century,” American Empire, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003, Chapter 1;
*Clarence Glacken, “Changing Ideas of the Habitable World,” in William L. Thomas, Man’s Role
in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, 70-92
William M. Davis, “The Geographical Cycle,” in Davis, Geographical Essays. Dover, 1954 edn.,
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249 - 78;
Carl O. Sauer, “The Agency of Man on Earth,” in Thomas William L. Thomas, Man’s Role in
Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, 49-69;
*Felix Driver, “Geographical Knowledge, Exploration and Empire,” in Geography Militant.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2001, 1-23;
^Bernasconi, R. "Who Invented the Concept of Race? Kant's Role in the Enlightenment
Construction of Race," in Bernasconi (ed.), Race (2001): 11–36.
Mary Louise Pratt, “Alexander von Humboldt and the Reinverntion of America,” in Imperial
Eyes. London: Routledge, 1992, 111-143.
Nature
*Neil Smith, "The Production of Nature," in George Robertson and Melinda Mash, eds.,
FutureNatural. London: Routledge 1996, 35-54.
^D. Harvey, "The Nature of Environment: The Dialectics of Social and Environmental Change,"
Socialist Register, 29, 1993, pp. 1-51.
^Katz, Cindi. 1998. “Whose Nature, Whose Culture? Private Productions of Space and the
Preservation of Nature.” In B. Braun and N. Castree (Eds.) Remaking Reality: Nature at the End of
the Millenium. Routledge (1998): 46-63.
David Stoddart, “Darwin‟s Impact on Geography,” in Stoddart, On Geography. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1981, 158 - 179;
Bruce Braun and Noel Castree eds. Nature at the Millenium. London: Routledge, 1998.
[A range of essays on contemporary treatments of nature and social theory]
^Castree, N. & Braun, B., 2001. Social Nature: Theory, Practice and Politics 1st ed.,
Wiley-Blackwell.
Globalization
David Harvey, “Cartographic Identities: Geographical Knowledges Under Globalization,” in
Spaces of Capital. Routledge: New York, 2001, 208- 33;
Jane Wills “Political Economy II: the Politics and Geography of Capitalism,” Progress in Human
Geography 24.4, 2000, 641-52.
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^Escobar, Arturo. 2001. “Place, Economy, and Culture in a Post-Development Era” Pp. 193-217
in Roxann Prazniak and Arif Dirlik, eds., Place and Politics in an Age of Globalization. Lanham:
Rowman and Littlefield.
^Arif Dirlik, "Place-Based Imagination: Globalism and the Politics of Place," in Roxann Prazniak
and Arif Dirlik, eds., Places and Politics in the Age of Globalization (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001), 34.
David Harvey, “Population, resources and the Ideology of Science,” in Spaces of Capital, op. cit.,
38-67;
W. M. Adams, “Sustainable Development?” in R.J. Johnston et.al., Geographies of Global
Change. Oxford: Basdil Blackwell, 1995, 354-73.
Cindi Katz, “On the Grounds of Globalization: A Topography for Feminist Political Engagement,”
Signs 26, 1213-34.
Production of space and place
*Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991, chapter 1.
^Harvey, D., Spacetime and the world. Wellek Lecture. 2009. Cosmopolitanism and the
geographies of freedom / David Harvey, New York : Columbia University Press.
^Harvey, David. "From Space to Place and Back Again: Reflections on the Condition of
Postmodernity" in Bird, Jon, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, George Robertson & Lisa Tickner, eds.
Mapping the Futures. London: Routledge, 1993: 3-29. Also in Justice, Nature, and the Geography
of Difference. Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1996.
^D. Massey, „Power-Geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place‟, in Bird et al., eds.,
Mapping the Futures, London: Routledge, 1993.
^Massey, D., 1994. General introduction. To Space, Place, and Gender 1st ed., Univ Of
Minnesota Press. Pp. 1-16.
^Ruddick, 1996. S. Ruddick, Constructing difference in public spaces: Race, class, and gender as
interlocking systems. Urban Geography 17 2 (1996), pp. 132-151.
Scale
Smith, N. "Geography, Difference and the Politics of Scale." In Joe Doherty, Elspeth Graham and
Mo Malek (eds) Postmodernism and the Social Sciences. London: Macmillan 1992, 57-79;
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Erik Swyngedouw, “Scaled Geographies: Nature, Place, and the Politics of Scale,” in Eric
Sheppard and Robert McMaster, eds., Scale and Geographic Inquiry. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004,
129-153;
^Swyngedouw E, 1997, "Neither global nor local: "glocalization" and the politics of scale", Cox,
K.R., 1997. Spaces of globalization: reasserting the power of the local, Guilford Press.
Sallie Marston,”A Long Way from Home: Domesticating the Social Production of Scale,” in
Sheppard and McMaster, op. cit., 170-191.
^Smith, N., 2008. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space 3rd ed.,
University of Georgia Press. Ch. 2-3.
^Sheppard, E.S. & McMaster, R.B., 2004. Scale and geographic inquiry: nature, society, and
method, Wiley-Blackwell.
Cartography and GIS
John Pickles, A History of Spaces. New York: Routledge, 2004.
[An analysis of historical and contemporary practices of cartography througfh the lens of social
theory]
^Winichakul, T. 1996 "Maps and the Formation of the Geo-Body of Siam," in Asian Forms of
Nations, ed. Hans Antlov and Stein Tonnesson, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and London:
Curzon Press, pp. 67-91.
^Biggs, M., 1999. Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State
Formation. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41(2), pp.374-405.
^Harley, J.B. 1989. "Deconstructing the Map." Cartographica 26:2. pp. 1-20.
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