Cultural Geography

The first edition presented an original interpretation/theory of culture and used that not only to survey the field but to lay out a particular critical agenda in cultural geography. While it was for the most part accessible, it was a challenging text. The author feels strongly that both instructors and students should work with arguments and debate them, rather than just read them and accept the positions/knowledge laid out as presented, and he insists that the integrity of his own argument must be preserved. While a second edition should be well worthwhile in sustaining the sales performance of the book, constraints in terms of the author's time/inclinations and his strongly held (negative) views about conventional textbooks will limit the revisions undertaken. Therefore I propose to proceed with whatever changes we can squeeze out of the author for a new edition, and in due course to commission a new and more conventional textbook to sit alongside it.

In practice we can realistically expect the following from the author:

1. Add a new preface that situates the book in the context of contemporary arguments and historical events. This will be short. A more thorough "updating" will be saved for an Afterword. The author's goal will be to draw students and scholars into the argument first and later encourage them to reflect on it (2000-3000 words). 2. Rewrite the current Introduction. Many instructors using the book have noted that the introduction is (perhaps needlessly) difficult and it is hard to get students through it. The new edition will benefit by establishing the nature of the argument to be made and the limits to it more clearly (add 1000 words). 3. Rewrite the Nationality chapter to take account of the post-September 11 rise of recidivist nationalism (particularly in the US) and the rise of an "American Empire" that cross-cuts the sort of neo-liberal globalization explored in that chapter (add no more than 2000 words). 4. Add a chapter dealing directly with cultural geographies of class, which represents a field that has developed significantly in the few years since the book was published. The chapter on class will be placed after the chapter on Nationality and will be used, in part, as a means to synthesize the previous chapters (8000-10,000 words). 5. Add an Afterword that more fully places the book in the context of contemporary historical events and geographical debates. The point of the Afterword will be to (allow students and scholars to) reflect on what's the same and what's different after September 11 and what that means for cultural theory in cultural geography (5000 words). Total additions: 20,000 words. Author's estimate of limited cuts he would be prepared to make elsewhere: 5,000 words. Overall net increase: 15,000 words (rising from 352pp to around 384pp).