The Dictionary of Human Geography

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strategies are used to explore and express the

co-constitution of material and experiential

space (Wylie, 2002b). Attention to myth,mem-

oryand ‘haunting’ embodied in the material

landscape is another expression of the retreat

from an exclusive focus onrepresentationin

cultural landscape studies, but this is also

another insistent restatement of the importance

of historical apprehension that was the hall-

mark of Sauer’s original prospectus: but now

understood in radically different terms. dec

Suggested reading

Be ́guin (1995); Duncan, Johnson and Schein

(2004).

cultural politics The processes through

which ‘meanings are negotiated and relations

of dominance and subordination are defined

and contested’ (Jackson, 1989, p. 2). An insist-

ence that the culturalispolitical, involving rela-

tions of power and conflicting interests

between different groups, has been central

to much work in cultural studies and, more

recently, cultural geography. It depends

upon a view ofcultureas plural, as socially

produced and struggled over. Attention has

focused in particular on the role of space

andplacein the construction of meanings and

identities as well as processes ofresistance

and transgression, in recognition that ‘[c]

ulture wars are real wars’ (Mitchell, 2000,

p. 287). dp

Suggested reading

Mitchell (2000).

cultural turn A set of intellectual develop-

ments that led to issues ofculturebecoming

central inhuman geographysince the late

1980s. The renewed interest in questions of

culture is not confined to human geography,

but within the discipline the cultural turn

usually refers a number of related trends:

(1) the emergence of a ‘new’ cultural

geography;

(2) the increasing attention to culture in

sub-fields such as economic, environ-

mental, historical and social geographies;

(3) claims that culture has become a more

important factor in the world itself – for

example, in economic processes or in

driving political conflict.

Theoretically, the cultural turn has promoted a

greater degree of pluralism in human geog-

raphy, drawing on concepts from other discip-

lines and focusing attention on multiple

dimensions of difference (includinggender,

race and sexuality). Methodologically,

the cultural turn has encouraged the use of a

wider range of interpretative andqualitative

methods. Epistemologically, the cultural turn

has underwritten a commitment to investigat-

ing the contingent and constructed qualities of

phenomena. It has also gone hand in hand with

a ‘geographical turn’ across thehumanities

and social sciences more generally.

But the cultural turn has also been criticized

for distracting geographers from undertaking

research that is useful for policy-makers,

and for retreating from the ‘materialist’

cultural landscape Natural landscape and cultural landscape(after Sauer, 1963 [1925])

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CULTURAL POLITICS