wonder why things are where they are, why they are represented in particular ways,
how things move and settle, how they are brought together and kept apart, and – and
this is crucial – how this came about. Cultural geography is, then, a style of thought –
a way of expanding and illuminating geographies. Or, perhaps better, cultural geo-
graphy is a style of thought that gathers to it a wide variety of questions, and ways of
answering.
Cultural geography as a style of thought is not, to be sure, a singular worldview (not
one way of thinking about the world; not a fixed question and answer session, as if in
the latest game show), but a place from which to ask valid and urgent questions of the
world; one in which the geographical is seen as constitutive of how the world is ‘made
up’. More than this, it is also a small ‘p’ politics of the object (of all possible objects
of knowing and unknowing) and of geographical relationships. It intends to change
our minds about how those geographies came about – and, thereby, about what possi-
bilities there are for changing things in the present, and in the future. This may seem
hopelessly naive, but it is a modest endeavour. The cultural has modified the geo-
graphical, making it possible to study more and more ‘things’, but also to bring more
and more ‘things’ under critical scrutiny. In some small way, then, it is about democ-
ratizing understanding, about being able to look to the world for the different things
that are going on there. And to learn lessons from it. It is therefore no accident that this
book has sections that seem to belong to other books – on the economy, maybe, or on
the social (and we even begin the book with these).
TheHandbook of Cultural Geographyultimately is a slightly (and deliberately)
unruly affair. In this, we hope to surprise readers, to help them appreciate not just what
is out there, but what else can be done – achieved – with these ideas. At turns, this
book might intrigue, annoy, frustrate or surprise – but this is exactly what cultural
geography is about. There is really something to get to grips with here. To this extent,
the Handbookis also an invitation. We invite you to engage with the ideas that are pre-
sented. We invite you to share the passions of this book. And, perhaps most impor-
tantly, we invite you to do cultural geography for yourself, to change it – to change the
very ways in which we think the cultural and the geographical, and how it is that we
can do them.
Finally, the editors have some debts of gratitude to acknowledge. In the first place,
we would like to express our appreciation for the outstanding hard work of our editor
at Sage, Robert Rojek. From the earliest meetings for this project, he would leave us
by saying that this was going to be ‘a fine thing’. His commitment to this book as a
fine thing has been shown both in the ways he has made it possible for this ambitious
work to actually happen, and also in his intellectual engagement with the project in its
fine grain and its big picture. As we have said, from the outset we wished to make this
book a collaboration amongst geographers. So we would like to thank all the section
editors for their energy and enthusiasm for this project. For most, this has required
patience and endurance as much as inspiration and passion. Ultimately, we hope, this
has been as rewarding an experience for them as it has been for us. Last, but far from
least, we would like to thank Michèle Marsh. The Handbookhas involved a constant
stream of draft chapters, which have had to be collated and distributed. This process
would have been a logistical nightmare but for Michèle’s secretarial efficiency and her
cheerful enthusiasm.PREFACE xixprelims.qxd 03-10-02 10:25 AM Page xix