Culture And Space: Conceiving A New Geography

Culture-pre.fm Page i Tuesday, April 19, 2005 2:26 PM Culture and Space Culture-pre.fm Page ii Tuesday, April 19, 2005 2:26 PM Culture-pre.fm Page iii Tuesday, April 19, 2005 2:26 PM Culture and Space Conceiving a new cultural geography Joël Bonnemaison Edited by Chantal Blanc-Pamard, Maud Lasseur and Christel Thibault Translated by Josée Pénot-Demetry Culture-pre.fm Page iv Tuesday, April 19, 2005 2:26 PM First published in French as La géographie culturelle by Éditions du CTHS © CTHS 2000, 2004 This English translation first published in 2005 by I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Website http://www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin’s Press 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Introduction copyright © John Agnew 2005 This translation copyright © Josée Pénot-Demetry 2005 All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review this book or any part thereof may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher International Library of Human Geography 8 ISBN 1 86064 908 4 pbk ISBN 1 8064 907 6 hbk A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress catalog card: available Typeset in Garamond by JCS Publishing Services Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin Culture-pre.fm Page v Tuesday, April 19, 2005 2:26 PM Contents List of illustrations vi Preface to the French edition vii Translator’s acknowledgements ix Introduction to the English edition by John Agnew xi 1 Introduction 1 2 The revival of the cultural approach 13 3 On whether culture and civilization are operational concepts in geography 54 4 The cultural system 77 5 Conclusion: Is the territory (or place) a new paradigm for human geography? 113 Biography of Joël Bonnemaison 120 References 122 Works by Joël Bonnemaison 132 Notes 139 Index 145 Culture-pre.fm Page vi Tuesday, April 19, 2005 2:26 PM List of illustrations Map of Vanuatu 14 A ceremonial pig tusk and its successive grades 26 The spatial model of a dancing place 67 Culture-pre.fm Page vii Tuesday, April 19, 2005 2:26 PM Preface to the French edition This book presents a series of university lectures by geographer Joël Bonnemaison, a researcher at ORSTOM who, in 1994, became professor at the University of Paris Sorbonne (Paris IV). In July 1997, Bonnemaison died suddenly while on a research mission in New Caledonia. Two of his students, Maud Lasseur and Christel Thibault, have been instrumental in making his lectures known to a larger public as they, along with fellow students Lydie Laberrondo and Laure Michel, compiled their coursework notes on which this book is based. All four students had been attending undergraduate and graduate classes at the Institute of Geography in 1994–97. Joël Bonnemaison’s goal was to ‘explore the new paths of cultural geography’. Through teaching, he also wished to share his ongoing analysis of the cultural foundations of human geography. His course was based on files and personal notes; Martine Bon