Geographical Imaginations

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0631183310 ISBN 13: 9780631183310

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 1994

Geographical Imaginations is at once a profound and penetrating reading of geography as a discipline and a discourse, and also an imaginative and sustained attempt to situate that discourse within the fabric of contemporary social theory. Its focus is on understanding the ways in which social life is variously embedded in place, space and landscape. In the fulfillment of this objective, historical imagination, textual exegesis, philosophical scrutiny, sociological interpretation, and geographical sensitivity are interwoven in such a way as to move spatial discourse to new levels of sophistication and subtlety.

In mapping human geography into contemporary social theory, the author addresses, reinterprets and questions key theoretical debates and issues - postcolonialism, structuration theory, feminism, deconstruction, postmodernism and poststructuralism - and explores the crucial connection between space, power and knowledge.

Deftly argued and illustrated throughout with pointed examples, Geographical Imaginations is both a lucid critique of contemporary social theory and a fundamental contribution to the understanding of social life and its intrinsic spatiality.

About the Author:

Derek Gregory was born in England in 1951. He grew up in Kent, received his undergraduate and postgraduate education at the University of Cambridge where he was a fellow of Sussex College and University Lecturer in Geography until 1989. Since then he has been Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. His previous books include Ideology, Science, and Human Geography (1987), and Regional Transformation and Industrial Revolution (1982).

Review:

"An authoritative map through the thickets of the geographical imagination." Times Literary Supplement

"Anyone who wants to be in touch with contemporary modes of thought in a wide variety of fields will benefit from reading this book ... its passages will open up new perspectives and possibilities for human geography, ranging from an excellent discussion of the expansion of social and cultural geography into topics that are less than traditional." The Canadian Geographer

"... subtle and generous ... As a result of his effort to draw connections between diverse projects while respecting their integrity and paying each the compliment of measured criticism, Geographical Imaginations is cheering testimony to just how much has already been achieved by way of transdisciplinary transformations since the 1960s, and a welcome invitation to imagine more." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space