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often-troubled relationship with the recent
surge in interest in the field. So, for the sake
of clarity, we shall start with these legacies,
then move to the explosion of work in the
1990s and finally point to current fragmenta-
tions in the field.
Throughout most of the twentieth century,
cultural geography existed as a sub-field in
different traditions of geography that addressed
‘the existence of a variegated landscape
of differentially adapted human groups to
their immediate environment’ (Archer, 1993,
p. 500). To draw out three approaches to
this topic:. In North American geography, the domi-
nant tradition was theberkeley school,
built around the work of Carl Ortwin
Sauer (1889–1975). So powerful was this
tradition that around the middle of the
twentieth century cultural geography was
often used to label allhuman geography
in US universities. Drawing on the work
especially of emerging anthropological per-
spectives onmaterial culture, from the
likes of Franz Boas (1858–1942), Sauer
added a geographical focus on landscape,
drawn from German geography’s work on
landschaft. His most famous formulation
on themorphologyoflandscape(in his
essay of that name in 1925) described the
cultural landscape, where culture was
the agent and landscape the medium.
Work in this tradition charted the origins
anddiffusionof cultures around the globe
fromcultural hearths. In this, it tracked
the movement mostly via material arte-
facts, taken as metonyms of cultures in
which they were embedded. Some work
developed a notion of cultural areas dom-
inated by one cultural group occupying an
area. The focus on culture as an agent led
to accusations that it was inventing
a ‘superorganic’ entity rather than focusing
on the mixed, changeable and contested
experience of people (Duncan, 1980).
Despite its empirical attention to processes
ofdiffusionand change in cultures con-
tacting different environments, it tended
to a singular view of culture held by and
defining a group.
. The focus on the mutual shaping of people
and place was echoed in European tradi-
tions in cultural geography. Theannales
schoolthat developed in France from the
work of Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845–
1918) is claimed by cultural, and bysocial
andhistorical geography. It paid close
attention to linkage of people and place
through ‘genres de vie’; that is, the ways
of everyday life. Exemplary works such as
Le Roy Ladurie’s (1966)Les Paysans de
Languedoc charted the intimate connec-
tions of the rhythms of daily life and the
environment over thelong dure ́e, creating
a ‘seamless robe’ of people and place. Vidal
de la Blache (1903) summarized this
process as follows:
It is man who reveals a country’s individu-
ality by moulding it to his own use. He
establishes a connection between unrelated
features, substituting for the random effects
of local circumstances a systematic cooper-
ation of forces. Only then does a country
acquire a specific character, differentiating
it from others, till at length it becomes, as
it were, a medal struck in the likeness of a
people.
The focus was on ordinary folk and everyday
cultures rather than high culture. Perhaps the
greatest studies building from these traditions,
that are still causing controversy, were those of
Fernand Braudel (1902–85), whose magis-
terial works of the shared development of a
Mediterranean culture (see Braudel and
Reynolds, 1975 [original French 1949]) –
based around olives, wine and grain, and the
long-term patterns of trade – remain scholarly
landmarks. These works echoed the studies of
Fre ́de ́ric le Play (1806–82), who developed a
geographical account of France around the
categories of Place–Work–Folk. His work was
picked up by the British planner and biologist
Patrick Geddes, and led to the foundation
of the Le Play Society that sponsored a range
of geographical expeditions during the mid-
twentieth century. They share the vision of
groups creating a culturalhomelandas ‘an
area carved out by axe and plough, which
belongs to the people who have carved it out’
(Olwig, 1993, p. 311).. In British geography, a regional approach
was inspired by Hettner’s La ̈nderkunde
schema (see Hettner, 1907) of natural
base up to social and finally cultural super-
structure – starting from geology, then
topography,climate, naturalresources
and finally leading to settlement and
human culture adapted to those circum-
stances (Heimatkunde). A similarlychoro-
logicalapproach in Swedish geography
focused onhembydsforskning(home area
studies), and drew upon ethnological stud-
ies of material culture andlanguageto
Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 130 31.3.2009 9:45pmCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY