The Dictionary of Human Geography

Comp. by: VPugazhenthi Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 9781405132879_4_M Date:1/4/
09 Time:15:19:35 Filepath:H:/00_Blackwell/00_3B2/Gregory-9781405132879/appln/3B2/
revises/9781405132879_4_M.3d

the least Marxism’s enduring significance for

critical geography. jm

Suggested reading

Gibson-Graham (2006b [1996]); Harvey (1999

[1982]); Henderson (1999); Smith (1990).

masculinism The tracing of connections

between cultures of masculinity, knowledge

andpower. It is located within traditions of

Western scientific rationality; in particular, the

dualisms between mind andbody,andsubject

and object, and the presumption that scientific

knowledge can and should be objective and

context free. Masculinist knowledge is criti-

cized for claiming to be exhaustive or universal,

while actually ignoring women’s existences or

casting them within a gendered binary, framed

from the perspective of men. Rose (1993) ar-

gues thatgeographyis a masculinist discipline,

and that masculinism determines conventions

of what is deemed worthy of geographical

investigation,fieldworkpractice,theoryde-

velopment, writing and representation, as well

as everyday academic life – from conduct in

seminars to job searches and promotion. She

identifies two masculinities (social scientific

and aesthetic) that frame this pervasive mas-

culinism within the academicgeographical

imagination.(Seealsoepistemology;

feminist geographies; phallocentrism;

post-structuralism.) gp

material culture Relationships between

people and things, or, more formally put, the

expression and negotiation of cultural, polit-

ical and economic relationships via the mater-

ial world of objects. Appadurai’s (1986) noted

text in this area supplies a further shorthand

definition:The social life of things. Culture has

often been conceived as an immaterial and

disembodied entity, composed of ideas, cus-

toms, knowledges and shared beliefs and val-

ues. One task for material culture studies –

today an interdisciplinary venture, bringing

together researchers fromhuman geography,

archaeology, anthropology, sociology and cul-

tural and social theory – has been to examine

how cultural beliefs and values gain perman-

ence,powerand significance through being

given material form and expression in build-

ings, artefacts, commodities, visual symbols,

displays, rituals and so on. Beyond this, how-

ever, writers in this area have also increasingly

been concerned to think through the inherent

materiality ofcultureitself. This has involved

attending to the question of how cultural val-

ues are materially produced and circulated. It

has further involved rethinking the categories

of ‘culture’ and ‘materiality’ themselves.

The origins of material culture studies are

complex. Traditionally, archaeology and an-

thropology have been the disciplines most

clearly associated with the study of material

forms of culture. Archaeology takes a realm

of recovered material objects as the basis from

which it seeks to reconstruct past cultures.

Equally, anthropology places emphasis upon

the importance of material forms and processes

• objects, clothes, buildings – in the formation
  and communication of distinctive cultures and
  subcultures. However, contemporary material
  culture studies also draws inspiration from
  semiotic and interpretative analyses of the sig-
  nificance of particular commodity forms under
  capitalism. In such analyses (e.g. Roland
  Barthes’ 1957 Mythologies), cultural objects
  such as cars, wine and washing powders are
  understood as texts which are authored (or
  produced) and read (consumed) in various
  ways, and this is viewed as a process in which
  particularhegemonicorideologicalcultural
  meanings are communicated and reproduced.
  The study ofcommoditiesand their use
  and consumption has continued to be a main-
  stay of material culture studies (e.g. Miller,
  1997), and this has further been one of the
  most important ways in which human geog-
  raphers have contributed to and interacted
  with this field (e.g. Jackson, 1999). Over the
  past ten years, studies of the materiality of
  cultures and commodities have indeed flour-
  ished in human geography. In part, this has
  been framed in terms of an agenda seeking to
  ‘re-materialize’ human geographies (Jackson,
  2000), in the wake of acultural turnwhich,
  it is argued, placed undue emphasis upon the
  determining rolevis-a`-viscultural practice of
  imaginative geographies of texts and
  images. This renewed geographicalempiri-
  cismtakes shape through studies ‘following’
  material objects within circuits ofcapitaland
  commodity chains(e.g. Cook, 2004), and
  through studies focused upon the physical
  materialities of particular spaces and practices.
  At the same time, work drawing inspiration
  fromactor-network theoryand new vital-
  isms has aimed to overcome a traditional dual-
  ity in which matter is viewed as dead and
  inanimate, and can only be given meaning
  and form via the conduits of human thought
  and discourse. Writing in this area (e.g.
  Anderson and Tolia-Kelly, 2004) has been
  explicitly concerned to rethink theepistemo-
  logicalstatus of material objects, and has
  sought to develop languages and methods

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_M Final Proof page 448 1.4.2009 3:19pm

MASCULINISM