Critical Concepts in Geography – serie

The map is a central element of our visual culture. It has also been a vital representation technology in many scholarly disciplines for hundreds of years, as well as a practical tool for navigation and a means for the government of territory. But, as the editor of this new four-volume collection from Routledge explains, the rhetorical power and technical complexity of how maps work are relatively underappreciated and not well analysed across the social sciences and beyond. Now, to enable researchers and advanced students to make better sense of a vast corpus of scholarship, Mapping brings together all the important literature in a comprehensive and coherently edited compendium. The carefully selected texts demonstrate how cartography works as a powerful representational form; they also explore how different mapping practices have been conceptualized.The four volumes are structured by theme—including ‘definitions and paradigms’; ‘design and communication’; ‘technologies and techniques’; and ‘people and politics’—and the gathered materials include major works from leading cartographers, as well as classic and cutting-edge pieces from scholars and researchers in cognate subject areas.

While often eluding the attention of the everyman, ‘space’ has been a longstanding concern of geographers (and of great interest to scholars from many other parts of the academy). ‘Space’ has been variously treated as absolute, relative, and relational; as a container or backdrop; as a social, aesthetic, and material construct or production; as marked by geographies of power and social difference; as an experiential or perceptual realm; as represented and not representable; as topographical and topological; and as fixed and in constant flux.Now, this new title from Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Geography series provides the first authoritative reference work to enable users to make sense of space and spatiality in geography, and in related disciplines. Edited by Peter Merriman, a prominent cultural geographer and author of Mobility, Space and Culture (Routledge 2012), Space is a four-volume collection of classic and cutting-edge contributions.The gathered works in Volume I explicate the philosophical and scientific foundations of contemporary thinking about space and spatiality, while the second volume examines the production of social, economic, and political spaces—tracing, for example, the emergence of social space in sociology and geography; Marxist writings on the socio-political production of capitalist spaces; studies of the spatialities of power; and different approaches to the emergence and constitution of spatial structures, networks, and relations. Volume III brings together important pieces on inhabitation, dwelling, and spaces of embodiment, identity, and difference.The final volume in the collection focuses on the vibrant and dynamic spatialities of the world, including poststructuralist examinations of how space is practised, performed, and in process; literature on the vibrant materiality, hybridity, and technological production of spaces; and a selection of major works which explore the cultural representation and articulation of spaces.With comprehensive introductions which situate the assembled materials in their historical and intellectual context, Space is an essential reference work for scholars and students concerned with the intersection of theories of space and place with questions of culture, politics, society, economics, power, identity, difference, and materiality.

Urban Ecology is a rapidly developing area of research and study. Drawing on the work of many disciplines—including geography, planning, landscape architecture, sociology, economics, anthropology, engineering, and climatology—urban ecologists argue that an understanding of the relationships between living organisms and their urban environment as an integrated social-ecological system is an essential component of the decision-making and planning needed to create viable—and sustainable—cities around the world. Now, Ian Douglas, one of Urban Ecology’s founding fathers (and editor of Routledge’s Handbook of Urban Ecology (2010), has brought together in four volumes the canonical and the very best cutting-edge research. The collection enables users readily to comprehend the philosophies, theories, and history of Urban Ecology, and make sense of the biophysical character of the urban environment, and the diverse habitats found within it. Urban Ecology also assembles essential works exploring how science can be put into practice to generate significant health, economic, and environmental benefits.With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Urban Ecology is an essential work of reference. The collection will be particularly useful as a database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar—and sometimes overlooked—texts. For researchers, students, practitioners, and policy-makers, it is a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

Big or small, islands and their inhabitant communities have long been the focus of intellectual enquiry, but in recent years a whole host of new academic institutes, journals, and conferences have devoted themselves to their study and research. And while early scholarly work mostly originated from those working in the natural sciences, and in Physical and Human Geography, Anthropology, and Archaeology, in the last twenty years or so serious research has also burgeoned under the rubric of, for example, Cultural Geography, Regional Development, Environmental Studies, Tourism, and Identity Studies.This new four-volume collection from Routledge meets the need for a comprehensive reference work to allow users to make better sense of this voluminous scholarly and practical literature. Indeed, the sheer scale—and range—of the research output makes this title especially welcome.Island Studies is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the material in its intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars, advanced students, and policy-makers as a vital one-stop research resource.