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ALL THE NAMES A CROSS-SECTION IN CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
2006-07-19T12:48:11Z
Editor(s)
Claval, Paul
Pagnini, Maria Paola
Scaini, Maurizio
Abstract
Our first intention was to compare the names that actually have participated in the
production of the ‘cultural turn’ in geography with the names which are actually available in
Portuguese libraries and bibliographies. To do that we have made a very simple exercise that
consisted in collecting ‘all the names’ which were present in the 4th edition of The Dictionary
of Human Geography, and that were intimately correlated with cultural geography themes.
The first blow was eminent: most part of them are not present in the various undergraduate
courses available in Portugal, and neither in most of academic dissertations. Feeling rather
alarmed with the extension of the list, we tried to make out some order of all these names by
mapping them into a ‘conceptual landscape cartography’.
The result is the one we can see on this map. This exercise would then consist of a sort of
'cross-section' in the conceptual landscape of cultural geography presenting ‘all the names’
arranged in conceptual spaces (the labels that structure the map) and by date: 1960s, green;
1970s, blue; 1980s, red; 1990s, orange.
Being aware that this rhetorical device is subject to the same criticisms of its original
exemplar, namely, that it is a freezing moment of a very complex process with differential
temporalities which require a heterogeneous concept of time, that does not blur the different
processes that are at work here.Vertical Themes
With the aim of identifying some of the changing processes present in this ‘horizontal
slice’ in time, we develop a 'vertical' arrangement of the politico-intellectual projects
underlying this map. In no way it should be considered as a linear narrative nor subsume to
genetic or progressive sequences. Even if the 'settlement continuity' metaphor may be
appealing to us, the questions that lie behind the processes of appearance, disappearance and
coexistence of research programs are of a complexity that can not be framed in simplistic
notions of evolution or revolution. In science studies one may be tempted to use this simplistic
notions guided by the maintenance of a certain grounded vocabulary, an entirely illusory
device where the same words refer to quiet different things, as some quiet different words may
refer to very similar things.
Journal
Proceedings of the Conference THE CULTURAL TURN IN GEOGRAPHY, 18-20th of September 2003 - Gorizia Campus
Part I: Cultural Geography: the Theoretical Approach
Languages
en
Rights
© Copyright 2003 Edizioni Università di Trieste - EUT
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