Description

The study of landscape and place has become an increasingly fertile realm of inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. In this new book of essays, selected from presentations at the first annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Geography, scholars investigate the experiences and meanings that inscribe urban and suburban landscapes. Gary Backhaus and John Murungi bring philosophy and geography into a dialogue with a host of other disciplines to explore a fundamental dialectic: while our collective and personal activity modifies the landscape, in turn, the landscape modifies human identities, and social and environmental relations. Whether proposing a peripatetic politics, conducting a sociological analysis of building security systems, or critically examining the formation of New York City's municipal parks, each essay sheds distinctive light on this fascinating and engaging aspect of contemporary environmental studies.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: Landings
Chapter 2 On the Question of Land: A Philosophical Perspective
Chapter 3 Where the Beaver Gnaw: Predatory Space in the Urban Landscape
Chapter 4 The Deceptive Environment: The Architecture of Security
Chapter 5 Getting Nowhere Fast? Intrinsic Worth, Utility, and a Sense of Place at the Century's Turn
Chapter 6 Auto-Mobility and the Route-Scape: A Critical Phenomenology
Chapter 7 Having a Need To Act
Chapter 8 Municipal Parks in New York City: Olmstead, Riis, and the Transformation of the Urban Landscape, 1858-1897
Chapter 9 Walking in the Urban Environment: Pedestrian Practices and Peripatetic Politics
Chapter 10 Valid Research in Human Geography and the Image of the Ideal Science

Product details

Published Mar 20 2002
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 275
ISBN 9780739103364
Imprint Lexington Books
Dimensions 228 x 149 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Gary Backhaus

Anthology Editor

John Murungi

Contributor

Ruth Connell

Contributor

Francis Conroy

Contributor

Mary A. Hague

Contributor

James Hatley

Contributor

David Macauley

Contributor

John A. Scott

Contributor

Derek Shanahan

Contributor

Nancy Siegel

Related Titles

Environment: Staging