Questioning Geography

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by Noel Castree, Douglas Sherman and Alisdair Rogers

Blackwell Publishers

Due/Published April 2003, 240 pages, paper

ISBN 140510192X

Questioning Geography presents and investigates fundamental issues that have helped to define geography and that continue to preoccupy geographers. Taken together these are the issues that have helped define geography as a modern research and teaching discipline. The book shows that geography is a diverse, changing and contested body of knowledge--one that has no singular 'nature' or essence. Each chapter offers a well-referenced, lucid introduction to the issue at hand and makes a well-argued case. At the same time the editors bring together in their introduction and conclusion a diagnosis of geography's present and future condition. Each chapter addresses a 'big' question relating to a specific issue,.

Contents

Part I: The 'nature' of geography
What is geography: Ali Rogers
A bridging discipline: Clive Agnew
The complete subject? Guy Robinson

Part II: The practice of geography
Is geography a science? Andrew Sayer
Is geography one of the humanities? Robert Sack,
Is geography an art? Denis Cosgrove

Part III: Key Themes in geography
Micro or macro? Doreen Massey
Process or Form? Ian Simmons
Past or Present? Barbara Kennedy
Theory or Reality? Bill Macmillan
Fact or Fiction? Tim Allott and Noel Castree

Part IV: The Uses of Geography
Whose Geography? Ali Rogers and Noel Castree
Is geography 'relevant'? Ron Johnston
A dissident geography? Matthew Sparke