Steve Pile – författare

-Space and Polity

`I never expected to call a handbook compulsive reading, but this wonderful volume changed all my preconceptions of what cultural geographers can do. Absorbing and thought-provoking, this is collaborative intellectual work at its imaginative best; it situates, explains and questions cultural geography as a "style of thought" and in the process imparts such vitality and joy from thinking in that style that this reader wants to join in. This Handbook can inform and inspire anyone concerned in any way with cultural research today' - Meaghan Morris, Chair Professor of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong

`The Handbook of Cultural Geography lives up to its name. It is a book about where things are, how people live, what life means and why events happen. It should be carried at all times by anyone who is curious about the world. Crammed within its covers is a wealth of detail about the power to make history and shape geography. This is a catalogue of the disagreements and alliances that shape the world, and of the politics (and costs) of engaging with that world.The book is comprehensive yet has depth, accessible as well as experimental, and challenging without being too daunting. Each page contains something that seems highly familiar yet curiously strange. The message of course is that what we normally take for granted is so strange. The achievement is that after reading the Handbook, the world will never seem "normal" again' - Susan J Smith, Ogilvie Professor of Geography, The University of Edinburgh

`A richly plural and impassioned re-presentation of cultural geography that eschews everything in the way of boundary drawing and fixity. A re-visioning of the field as "a set of engagements with the world," it contains a vibrant atlas of ever shifting possibilities. Throbbing with commitment, and un-disciplined in the most positive sense of that term, it is exactly what a handbook ought to be' - Professor Allan Pred, Department of Geography, University of California at Berkeley

`A handbook with attitude and purpose, bristling with vitality, openness, and novelty. Dispelling with fixtures, canons, and retrofits, an imaginative cast in the hands of four of the most exciting contemporary cultural geographers opens up the cultural plural - culture as distribution of things, as a way of life, as meaning, as doing, as power - to a new spatial sensibility concerned with the fluid and mobile, the broadest ecology of spatial surfaces, the everyday lived, and the impetus of experimental forcings. A wonderful display of the confident maturity and originality that contemporary geography brings to cultural studies' - Professor Ash Amin, Department of Geography, University of Durham

The Handbook of Cultural Geography presents a state of the art assessment of the key questions informing cultural geography. Emphasizing the intellectual diversity of the discipline, the Handbook presents a comprehensive statement of the relationship between the cultural imagination and the geographical imagination while also looking at resonances between cultural geography and other disciplines.

The work is cross-referenced throughout and presents a completely integrated overview of cultural geography. This will be an essential reference for any inquiry into how culture is spatially constituted and, equally, how geography is culturally constructed.

What is real about city life? Real Cities shows why it is necessary to take seriously the more imaginary, fantastic and emotional aspects of city life.

Drawing inspiration from the work of Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud and Georg Simmel, Pile explores the dream-like and ghost-like experiences of the city. Such experiences are, he argues, best described as phantasmagorias. The phantasmagorias of city life, though commonplace, are far from self-evident and little understood. This book is a path-breaking exploration of urban phantasmagorias, grounded empirically in a series of unusual and exciting case studies.

In this study, four substantial phantasmagorias are identified: dreams, magic, vampires and ghosts. The investigation of each phantasmagoria is developed using a wide variety of clear examples. Thus, voodoo in New York and New Orleans shows how ideas about magic are forged within cities. Meanwhile vampires reveal how specific fears about sex and death are expressed within, and circulate between, cities such as London and Singapore. Taken together, such examples build a unique picture of the diverse roles of the imaginary, fantastic and the emotional in modern city life.

What is "real" about the city has radical consequences for how we think about improving city life, for all too often these are over-looked in utopian schemes for the city. Real Cities forcefully argues that an appreciation of urban phantasmagorias must be central to what is considered real about city life.

What is real about city life? Real Cities shows why it is necessary to take seriously the more imaginary, fantastic and emotional aspects of city life.

Drawing inspiration from the work of Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud and Georg Simmel, Pile explores the dream-like and ghost-like experiences of the city. Such experiences are, he argues, best described as phantasmagorias. The phantasmagorias of city life, though commonplace, are far from self-evident and little understood. This book is a path-breaking exploration of urban phantasmagorias, grounded empirically in a series of unusual and exciting case studies.

In this study, four substantial phantasmagorias are identified: dreams, magic, vampires and ghosts. The investigation of each phantasmagoria is developed using a wide variety of clear examples. Thus, voodoo in New York and New Orleans shows how ideas about magic are forged within cities. Meanwhile vampires reveal how specific fears about sex and death are expressed within, and circulate between, cities such as London and Singapore. Taken together, such examples build a unique picture of the diverse roles of the imaginary, fantastic and the emotional in modern city life.

What is "real" about the city has radical consequences for how we think about improving city life, for all too often these are over-looked in utopian schemes for the city. Real Cities forcefully argues that an appreciation of urban phantasmagorias must be central to what is considered real about city life.

This book seeks to understand the coexistence of bodily regimes and the politics that emerge from the clash between them:

This book seeks to understand the coexistence of bodily regimes and the politics that emerge from the clash between them:

For the first time in history, half of the worlds population is living in mega-cities. Never before have we confronted such a geography of the worlds people.Analysing cities through spatial understanding, City Worlds explores how different worlds within the city are brought into close proximity. The authors outline new ways to address the ambiguities of cities: their promise and potential, their problems and threats.

For the first time in history, half of the worlds population is living in mega-cities. Never before have we confronted such a geography of the worlds people.Analysing cities through spatial understanding, City Worlds explores how different worlds within the city are brought into close proximity. The authors outline new ways to address the ambiguities of cities: their promise and potential, their problems and threats.

This exciting collection opens up many new conversations on BodyPlace and introduces new theories of embodied places and the placing of bodies. Extensive introductory and concluding sections guide students through the key debates and themes. Places Through the Body draws on a wide range of contemporary examples and creative ideas to address such topics as: * How racist ideologies are embedded in modern architechtural discourse and practice * How urban spaces make bodies disabled * How the seemingly virtual worlds of knowledge and technology are embodied * How gyms enable women body builders to make new kinds of bodies * How male bodies are placed onto the silver screen * New kinds of femininity Here geographers, architects, anthropologists, artists, film theorists, theorists of cultural studies and psycho-analysis work alongside each other to make clear connections between bodies and places.

This exciting collection opens up many new conversations on BodyPlace and introduces new theories of embodied places and the placing of bodies. Extensive introductory and concluding sections guide students through the key debates and themes. Places Through the Body draws on a wide range of contemporary examples and creative ideas to address such topics as: * How racist ideologies are embedded in modern architechtural discourse and practice * How urban spaces make bodies disabled * How the seemingly virtual worlds of knowledge and technology are embodied * How gyms enable women body builders to make new kinds of bodies * How male bodies are placed onto the silver screen * New kinds of femininity Here geographers, architects, anthropologists, artists, film theorists, theorists of cultural studies and psycho-analysis work alongside each other to make clear connections between bodies and places.

Rejecting static and reductionist understandings of subjectivity, this book asks how people find their place in the world. Mapping the Subject is an inter-disciplinary exploration of subjectivity, which focuses on the importance of space in the constitution of acting, thinking, feeling individuals. The authors develop their arguments through detailed case studies and clear theoretical expositions. Themes discussed are organised into four parts: constructing the subject, sexuality and subjectivity, the limits of identity, and the politics of the subject. There is, here, a commitment to mapping the subject - a subject which is in some ways fluid, in other ways fixed; which is located in constantly unfolding power, knowledge and social relationships. This book is, moreover, about new maps for the subject.

Rejecting static and reductionist understandings of subjectivity, this book asks how people find their place in the world. Mapping the Subject is an inter-disciplinary exploration of subjectivity, which focuses on the importance of space in the constitution of acting, thinking, feeling individuals. The authors develop their arguments through detailed case studies and clear theoretical expositions. Themes discussed are organised into four parts: constructing the subject, sexuality and subjectivity, the limits of identity, and the politics of the subject. There is, here, a commitment to mapping the subject - a subject which is in some ways fluid, in other ways fixed; which is located in constantly unfolding power, knowledge and social relationships. This book is, moreover, about new maps for the subject.