Cultural Geography

of difference whereby it was implied that

inequalities of race, class and gender could be

stacked up in some simple additive fashion.

These separate ‘dimensions’ were then

mapped, either literally or figuratively, in suc-

cessive studies of residential segregation. It

became increasingly apparent, however, that

standard cartographies were unable to deal

with new theorizations of the mutual constitu-

tionof race, class and gender. As Vron Ware

(1992) and others argued, gender identities

are simultaneously racialized (and vice versa).

Recent work on the geographies of race

and racism (as reviewed by Bonnett, 1996; see

also Chapter 15, this volume) increasingly

acknowledges that we all lead racialized lives

rather than assuming that ‘race’ or ‘ethnicity’

are terms that only apply to certain minority

groups. Rather than focusing on the spatial

expression of ethnic or racialized identities,

therefore, current research is increasingly

exploring the racialization of spaceas an active,

constitutive process at a variety of scales from

the neighbourhood to the nation and beyond

(see Smith, 1989). It is in this sense that Avtar

Brah revives the notion of cartography, to

argue that what she calls ‘diaspora space’ is

‘inhabited’ not only by diasporic subjects but

equally by those who are constructed and

represented as ‘indigenous’ (1996: 16). So, too,

studies such as Kay Anderson’s (1991) analysis

of the social and spatial construction of

Vancouver’s Chinatown illustrate the turn from

mapping the geographies of isolated ethnic

minorities to studies that explore the role of

dominant discourses in the construction of

racialized space. Likewise, Jane Jacobs’ (1996)

account of the postcolonial geographies of

urban redevelopment in London demon-

strates a relational view of space whereby the

view from the financial centre of the City of

London (the ‘heart of empire’) cannot be

divorced from an exploration of the margins

of racialized inner-city neighbourhoods such

as Spitalfields.

A relational view of identity and space is

also intrinsic to recent studies of transnation-

ality, explored in Katharyne Mitchell’s chapter.

Such research focuses on the transnational

connections between people, places and

things, drawing together a political-economic

understanding of capital investment and

labour migration with a critical understanding

of the hybrid cultures and identities that result

from such processes. Indeed, as Roger Rouse’s

(1991) work on the transnational geographies

of Mexico and southern California reveals,

transnational labour migration and business

development have opened up a series of new

spaces that are increasingly encompassing all

sections of society, not just those people who

are themselves directly connected to trans-

national migrant communities. In Rouse’s words:

‘The comfortable modern imagery of nation-

states and national languages, of coherent

communities and consistent subjectivities ...

no longer seems adequate ... [D]uring the last

20 years, we have allmoved irrevocably into a

new kind of [transnational] social space’

(1991: 8, emphasis in the original). Research

on transnationality has also repudiated more

simple-minded, top-down models of globaliza-

tion, demonstrating the continued significance

of local contexts of consumption and calling

forth a more relational view of the global–

local nexus.

SEEING THE SOCIAL THROUGH

THE LENS OF THE CULTURAL

As well as demonstrating the value of

approaching the social through the lens of the

spatial, each of the chapters in this section also

demonstrates the importance of seeing the

socialthrough the lens of the cultural, rather

than seeing social and cultural geographies as

mutually antagonistic (one concerned with

material inequalities, the other with discursively

constructed differences). Recent research on

disability (reviewed here by Gregson and by

Moss and Dyck) demonstrates the value of

tracing the social construction of disability in

both its material and its discursive forms.

Rather than focusing exclusively on problems

of access, where space – defined in terms of

barriers and obstacles – is a mere container

for human action, recent work has shown how

disabled space is actively constituted through

countless decisions about planning and design,

regulated and reinforced by the power of the

state. From this perspective,‘disabling space’ is

as culturally constructed as ‘disability’ itself.

Some environments are more enabling than

others, just as some conditions (such as

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