The Dictionary of Human Geography

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recovery of these hidden meanings was thus

linked to recovering the voices and views

of silenced and oppressed groups, especially

in studies informed by post-colonialism

(Blunt and McEwan, 2002). This latter work

also inspired studies of cultural definition and

difference (e.g. Anderson, 2007), especially

the creation ofotherness. Here, the focus

became how cultural artefacts were not simply

indicators of cultural belonging, waiting to be

analysed by academics, but were actively

used to signal and create identities by ordinary

people.

These two approaches often fused and

cross-pollinated. For instance, work on urban

ethnicitymoved fromsegregationanalyses,

of distributions of peoples, to studies of the

lived experience of those cultures, how they

signified belonging and how they signified

exclusion. Rather than now examining the dis-

tribution of cultures seen as discrete entities

occupying more or less exclusiveterritories,

cultural geography engaged with the study of

connections, movements and circulations of

meanings intransnationalismanddiasporic

cultures created in the modern global world.

These often form examples of cultural

hybridityand hybridization, which confound

the exclusions and repressions of hegemonic

cultures that sought to maintain a link of

people (singular) and territory. Studies saw

the multiple categories of identity connected

and inflected by people’s local milieu (e.g., on

youth, class and race, Nayak, 2003), or looked

at the fluidities and fixities of labelling and

categorization in transforming urban milieux

(Pred, 2000).

Beyond issues of ethnicity, cultural geog-

raphy moved to explore many other aspects

ofidentitypolitics (Keith and Pile 1993;

Pile and Keith, 1997), such assexualityand

disability, which became ever more salient

in the closing years of the twentieth century.

The main focus was on practices of inclusion

or exclusion, belonging, resistance and iden-

tity. A major strand of work emerged around

the different forms and modalities ofcon-

sumptionand how this related to people’s

identities.

The focus on identity and the meaning

of social activities was transplanted into other

formerly discrete sub-disciplines. Thus it

became increasingly common to see studies

of rural cultural geographies, concerning

issues of Otherness and identity (e.g. Cloke

and Little, 1997), and urban geographies of

cultures, political geographies about identity

or using similar methods in deconstructing

key texts in acritical geopolitics.Ineco-

nomic geographythere was a double focus,

both on cultural forms in thecultural econ-

omy(e.g. Amin and Thrift, 2003) and on

‘enculturing’ approaches – focusing upon pro-

cesses of meaning and belonging within both

firms and markets. In some cases this blurring

into other fields has been controversial and has

met with hostility from those who regard with

suspicion the topical focus (as not being of

great importance) or the methods as lacking

in either rigour or the appearance of rigour

sufficient to persuade policy-makers. There

have thus been arguments about the cultural

turn going ‘too far’ and undermining former

assumptions and unities (Martin and Sunley,

2001). The incorporation of cultural issues has

had an energizing effect on other sub-fields, but

has also meant that cultural geography’s own

distinctiveness has become less clear. As a sub-

discipline it has been relatively unconcerned,

if not antipathetic, to policing the boundaries

of enquiry, especially given how it has shown

that definitions enact power relations and

often work to exclude groups. Likewise, it has

continued to draw catholically from other dis-

ciplines, blurring the edges of geography.

Within the sub-discipline, a recent series of

debates have begun to challenge some of the

sureties that have emerged over the past

20 years. First, while criticisms ofidealism

have long been levelled at cultural geography,

often in the name of re-prioritizing other cat-

egories of analysis in the name ofhistorical

materialism, a new set of theorizations of

materialismhave emerged within the sub-

field itself. These often refuse thecartesian

divide intosubjectand object, and look at

thinking as a material process embedded in

the world. They also attempt to provide

renewed senses ofagencyfor the material

world, ratherthan just focusing on human

agency. Some work challenges the anthropo-

centric basis ofhumangeography, and culture

as a human artefact, drawing onposthuman-

ismand driving renewed studies intoanimal

geographies. Second, debates have contested

the focus upon signification and meaning

within cultural geography. Instead, recent work

flags up the role of habit and routine focusing

on the unconscious and preconscious shaping

of identities and actions. Third, the focus

on the textual mode of interpretation has

been argued to privilegerepresentationas a

social process. Instead,non-representational

theoryfocuses upon theperformanceand

enactment of identities. This rematerialization

and rethinking of cultural geography often

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CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY