Book Reviews

Peter O. Muller, Book Review Editor

From Chicago to L.A.: Making Sense of Urban Theory. Michael Dear, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications,
2002. xi and 444 pp., maps, diags., photos, notes, and index. $89.95 cloth ((ISBN)-7619-2094-3)
Reviewed by Brian Coffey, Urban Studies Program, University of Washington, Tacoma, Tacoma, WA.

The drive from Chicago to Los Angeles takes about
three days or, if flying is an option, the trip can be redu-
ced to about four hours. For some, however, it is a jour-
ney that has lasted 75 years, beginning with the rise of
the Chicago School of urban sociology in the 1920s
and ending with the emergence of an L.A. School of
urbanism. As any student of urban theory knows, the
Chicago School dominated urban studies for much of
the 20th century. However, over the past 10 to 15 years,
various scholars have begun to suggest that this dom-
ination merits rethinking. In large part these calls for
change have stemmed from the notion that the precepts
of the Chicago School are no longer the best approach to
understanding the contemporary city. What worked in
Chicago some three-quarters of a century ago has, they
charge, little applicability to present-day cities whose
existence is based on vastly different technologies and
values and whose form bears little resemblance to the
relatively compact nature of the early-20th-century city.
In short, Chicago is no longer a viable model for the
study of urban growth and development. Los Angeles,
on the other hand, is deemed ideal.
Included among the advocates of an L.A. School of
urban thought is Michael Dear, who argues that a new
(and better) set of principles has been defined to study
the city, principles that owe their origins to the rise of Los
Angeles and the other cities that dot Southern Cali-
fornia. As Dear puts it, ‘‘Los Angeles has . . . posited a
different set of rules for understanding urban growth’’ (p.
viii) and, he contends, it is this new set of rules that ty-
pifies the growth and development of the American city.
From Chicago to L.A. makes a strong argument for the
legitimacy of an L. A. School of urbanism. It does so by
whisking its readers away from early-20th-century Chi-
cago and planting them firmly amid the social and cultur-
al landscapes of early- 21st-century Southern California.
Further, it is suggested that these are landscapes that
the residents of virtually any U.S. metropolitan area might
easily recognize. In other words, Los Angeles, long viewed
as an urban anomaly, is now to be viewed as the norm.
This volume, made up of 16 chapters dealing with
various aspects of urban life in Southern California, is
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(2), 2004, pp. 425–444 r 2004 by Association of American Geographers
Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, U.K.
divided into four parts: ‘‘Los Angeles and the ‘L.A.
School,’’’ ‘‘City of Industry,’’ ‘‘Reconsidering Community,’’
and ‘‘Revisioning Urban Theory.’’ At first glance the
book seems to be an odd mix of essaysFindustry, home-
lessness, immigrants, ecosystems, gay communities, the
media, gangs, religion, and governance are among
the topics included. Indeed, a scan of the table of con-
tents may well leave one wondering how this mélange can
serve as an important buttress in presenting the case for
an L.A. School of urban thought. However, as one delves
into the book, concerns of this sort begin to disappear.
The work begins and ends with chapters by Michael
Dear (the first is coauthored with Steven Flusty). Both
chapters deal with the notion of an L. A. School of ur-
banism. In Chapter 1 the rise of the L. A. School is
explored, and a case is made that such a school does in
fact exist. In the final chapter Dear briefly reviews all of
the book’s chapters to identify insights that serve ‘‘as
points of departure for a revised theoretical and
empirical inquiry into the nature and significance of
the city’’ (p. 423). He also uses these summaries to say
that ‘‘a most emphatic yes!’’ is clearly the best answer
to the question of whether or not an L.A. School exists
(p. 423).
However, it is what falls between these two chapters
that best serves to define the L.A. School. Throughout,
the book relies heavily on The City, the 1925 classic by
Park, Burgess, and McKenzie. Each chapter of From
Chicago to L.A. is prefaced with quotes from The City,
and the authors of the various chapters make repeated
reference to Park et al. in presenting their own ideas. It is
a technique that works quite well. The quotes put each
chapter into perspective and establish a framework for
the work as a whole. In effect, The City is used to stitch
together the chapters of From Chicago to L.A. The se-
lected quotes, along with the authors’ own perspectives
on their work vis-à-vis writings in The City, give cause to
accept the legitimacy of the L.A. School. In essence, the
authors of From Chicago use The City as a tool to make
the transition or leap from Illinois to California.
It is fair to say that in each section of the book cri-
ticism of the Chicago School can be found (e.g., it is
426 Book Reviews
outmoded, it has negatively impacted the city, or it ig-
nores important themes). For example, in the segment
billed as ‘‘City of Industry,’’ Greg Hise examines industry
and social reform from a historical perspective to ‘‘find
the roots of the city that urban theorists . . . trumpet as a
prototype for twenty-first-century urbanism’’ (p. 122). In
doing so, he offers a critique of the concentric zone model
as something that influenced urban policy in a largely
negative way. In this same section Allen Scott provides
an interesting discussion of the post-Fordist industrial
landscape of the late 20th century as something markedly
different from the Fordist era of mass production that
once typified the industrial landscapes of Eastern cities.
It is in this fashion that the book wends its way
through the postmodern, industrial, cultural, and social
scenes that make up the L.A. urban regionFa region
that is neatly packaged through the various chapters and
deftly contrasted with Chicago.
In the section on community, for example, Cheryl
Maxson and Malcolm Klein use Park’s discussion of
delinquency and gangs in Chicago as a ‘‘springboard’’ to
discuss the gangs of L.A. which, they argue, ‘‘have come
to epitomize the urban street gang phenomenon’’ in a
manner that the gangs of Chicago never did (p. 239).
Donald Miller takes a similar tack in discussing religion
in Los Angeles, noting that Park and others of his time
(and place) saw a ‘‘growing secularization’’ such that ‘‘the
only place religion might survive in the future would be
on the golf course and in coping with the unpredictable
twists and turns of the stock market’’ (p. 272). None-
theless, Miller finds that religion is alive and well in L.A.,
contrary to Park’s suggestion that city life ‘‘precludes
religious commitment.’’ However, he also finds that
while the Chicago School’s views about religion are
outdated, its approach to the study of religion continues
to have validity.
The final part of the book (‘‘Revisioning Urban
Theory’’) is, as Dear notes, ‘‘intended to open up a
conversation about the Los Angeles School’’ (p. 319).
Here one finds essays on the media, urban ecology, and
environmental issues. The extent to which these works
‘‘open up a conversation about the Los Angeles School’’
more than previous chapters is not entirely clear. How-
ever, nearly all of the book’s chapters in one way or
another steer the reader back to the central theme: the
existence of an L.A. School of urbanism. This existence
is, in part, proclaimed by Dear because ‘‘the current body
of literature on Los Angeles . . . attest[s] to the city’s
critical mass in contemporary urban theorizing’’ (p. 12),
an argument that some might see at odds with his view
that ‘‘Los Angeles is the least studied major city in the
United States’’ (p. viii). Nevertheless, the book itself
contributes significantly to this literature in making its
case for the rise of an L.A. School.
In discussing the school, Dear is quick to point out
that care must be taken to ensure that it does not be-
come exclusionary and hegemonic (although one gets
the impression in reading some of the chapters that a few
moves toward hegemony are already at work). With
respect to this, Philip Ethington and Martin Meeker
raise some interesting points in the book’s 15th chapter.
This essay, entitled ‘‘Saber y Conocer’’ deals with ap-
proaches to urban inquiry. In reading it, one gets the
sense that Ethington and Meeker are standing apart
from their fellow theorists as if observing the academic
wrangling from afar. After watching for a while they
surmise that something is amiss, and they seek to rectify
the situation by dampening some of the enthusiasm and
zeal that is manifested for the L.A. School. In discussing
modes of inquiry, they note that ‘‘there are many frag-
mented, yet interlocking, practices . . . of urban inquiry
. . . [and] the theorists and practitioners of each
successive urbanist school still exist in the same tradi-
tionFthey can build on but cannot escape the deve-
loping, sprawling, metropolis of inquiry’’ (p. 406). They
conclude their work by arguing that ‘‘the battles between
modernists and postmodernists, between humanists and
social scientists, between totalizers and fragmenters,
cease to be interesting or relevant because no dominant
school of urban studies exists,’’ and they cap what may
be heresy to some by concluding that ‘‘the talk of an L.A.
School coming to replace a Chicago School makes about
as much sense as saying the Upper East Side of Man-
hattan replaced the Lower East Side’’ (p. 417).
Broad acceptance of the L.A. School as a ‘‘replace-
ment’’ for the Chicago School and as the preferred
(dominant?) approach to urban studies remains to be
seen. However, in the final analysis the book serves its
purpose. It captures a range of the many landscapes that
are Los Angeles, it presents a variety of perspectives on
urban thought, and it leaves one with a sense about the
L.A. School. A reading of it makes it easy to see why
the concept of an L.A. School has been readily accepted
by so many. However, in embracing this school, researchers
would do well to keep in mind Dear’s cautions about
hegemony and exclusion and Ethington and Meeker’s
thoughts about modes of inquiry.
Key Words: Los Angeles School, urban theory, postmodernism.
References
Park, R., E. Burgess, and R. McKenzie. 1925. The city: Sugges-
tions for investigation of human behavior in the urban environ-
ment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 Book Reviews
The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. Don Mitchell. New York: Guilford Press, 2003.
vi and 237 pp., map, photos, notes, and index. $23.00 paper (ISBN 1-57230-847-8).
Reviewed by Robert A. Beauregard, Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, New School
University, New York, NY.
When gay and lesbian activists, pro-life advocates,
antiglobalization demonstrators, and Southern segrega-
tionists are denied places to demonstrate, democracy
suffers. When the homeless are denied access to public
space, however, their very being is threatened. Lacking
private property, existence itself depends on having a
right to inhabit the city.
Even when free speech and the right to assembly are
constitutionally guaranteed, realizing them often re-
quires popular struggle. Public spaces become open to
dissent, diverse lifestyles, and the disenfranchised only
through political action. Set against such struggle,
however, is a legally framed public order that is uncom-
fortable with incivility, social differences, and protest. It
is not commodification that threatens public space, but
the constriction of legal rights. The state matters.
For Don Mitchell, rights are the crux of the argument.
They are not simply legal fictions, whose pursuit deflects
attention from the material conditions of oppression,
exploitation, and injustice. Neither are they merely the
accouterments of citizenship. Rather, in liberal democ-
racies where the ‘‘rule of law’’ prevails and the legal sys-
tem is relatively autonomous from political and financial
manipulation, the advocacy of rights can serve as a
powerful institutional wedge for prying apart ‘‘durable
inequalities’’ (Tilly 1998). Reform is both possible and
desirable. Rights offer a point of strategic intervention
around which organizing can occur.
Rights take on particular importance in relation to
public space. In response to the labor activism of
the early 20th century, case law attempted to mediate the
boundary between free speech and public order. Local
antipicketing ordinances and subsequent court rulings
endeavored, in Mitchell’s evocative phrase, ‘‘to make
dissent safe for democracy.’’ In doing so, the courts have
regulated public behavior so as to enable the free
exchange of ideas and opinions. Behaviors that stifle
exchange or engender violence have been prohibited.
Over the decades, activists (mainly on the Left) have
managed to expand the bounds of lawful behavior, in-
cluding not only what can be said in public but where
people can assemble and what they can do. At issue is
the dominant order of society as represented by private
property interests and by upper and middle classes fearful
of the masses, whether the masses appear as union orga-
427
nizers, antiwar demonstrators, lesbian couples, idle teen-
agers, or hippies. Challenges to the prevailing order,
however, are only meaningful when they occur in public
and seldom effective until they are disruptive.
Rights are not automatically granted. For example,
African Americans in the South during the Jim Crow
era had the right to vote, granted to them by the 15th
Amendment, but that right could hardly be exercised. It
took the 1960s’ civil rights movement and new federal
legislation to truly enfranchise them. Only through social
struggles are rights assured, redefined, and expanded.
Each new challenge engenders revisions in case law and
new public forum doctrine. Through this process, pub-
lic space is re-made. ‘‘[T]he struggle for rights produces
space,’’ Mitchell argues (p. 29). At the same time, until
public space is secured, rights remain symbolic.
Achieving rights to the public space of the city also
brings recognition. No longer in the shadows, groups can
now voice their opinions and reveal their identities.
Democracy ‘‘requires public visibility, and public visibility
requires material public space’’ (p. 148). Through strug-
gle, then,democracy becomes more tolerant of differences.
Mitchell constructs this argument through a series of
case studies. He looks at pro-life advocates and abortion
clinics, the labor agitation and antipicketing ordinances
of the early 20th century, the Free Speech Movement
in the 1960s at the University of California, Berkeley,
and the subsequent struggles over the People’s Park, and
vagrancy laws promulgated by city governments in the
1990s to contain and remove homeless people from
public spaces. Each case is subjected to both a legal and
political analysis. Government (and university) regula-
tions are set in the context of existing case law on the
rights to assembly, free speech, and threats to the public
order. Politically, Mitchell values a democracy in which
differences are tolerated and no single ‘‘order’’ holds
sway in public. For him, social justice exists only when all
groups have the right to ‘‘be’’ in public space.
Mitchell is particularly interested in the homeless.
The homeless are the one group for which public space is
more than a matter of gaining adherents or influencing
public policy. For them, public space is the only space
they have in which to exist. Pushed from public spaces
and lacking ‘‘private’’ alternatives, their lives are directly
threatened. Denied public space, they are nowhere.
428 Book Reviews
They cannot find shelter, cannot forage for food, can-
not panhandle, cannot perform bodily functions, and
cannot exist as human beings.
In public space, however, the homeless violate social
norms and make the ‘‘housed’’ uncomfortable. The
homeless are a sign that America is neither a compas-
sionate society nor a land of opportunity. Consequently,
critics contend, they discourage the use of public space
by others, harming commerce and stifling democracy.
The prevailing order, the order that values civility and
self-responsibility, is eroded. Enabling the homeless to
occupy public space, then, poses the greatest challenge
to society’s tolerance for dissent and difference. From
a legal and moral perspective, the homeless push the
public forum doctrine to its limits.
Mitchell could have picked other groups. African
Americans in the United States during the first half of
the 20th century were also denied access to public space
and their rights suppressed (Fredrickson 2002). They
were forced to sit in the back of public buses, sent to
inferior public schools, and relegated to the balconies
of segregated movie theaters. Dissent was punished in
numerous ways from the denial of credit to lynchings.
African Americans could occupy public space only if
they remained invisible. Stripped of their identity and
their dignity, they subsequently engaged in a national civil
rights struggle in the streets, in the courts, and in Con-
gress to claim the rights that were constitutionally theirs.
My one major criticism of this otherwise perceptive
and informative book is the absence of this important
instance of social injustice in America and the enduring
way in which race and space intersect. Doing so would
have encouraged Mitchell to deepen his analysis and
enabled him to broaden his argument. Many other in-
stances exist where race and the denial of rights intersect
to reinforce and perpetuate injustice: blacks under apar-
theid in South Africa, the plight of Palestinians, and the
daily struggles of ordinary citizens in Liberia are just
three examples. This investigatory path leads to human
rights, international bodies such as the World Court, and
to the recurring instances of genocide that plagued the
world in the 20th century.
At the same time, Mitchell, not surprisingly, leaves a
number of practical puzzles relatively untheorized. One
A Geographical Guide to the Real and the Good. Robert D. Sack. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. x and 302
pp., diags, notes, and index. $26.95 paper. (ISBN 0-415-94485-6).
Reviewed by David M. Smith, Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, UK.
One of the most significant features of human geog-
raphy during the last decade of the 20th century was an
is the limits of civil disobedience. Serious dissent can
hardly avoid being disruptive, but when does disruption
become unacceptable, when does civil disobedience
becomes harmful to society and morally intolerable?
The second involves the limits of the prevailing order.
Mitchell slips away from the difficultiesFeven impossi-
bilityFof ever defining a wholly inclusive and egalitar-
ian social order. Power is and will remain concentrated
and sedimented; the groups who hold it will put their
imprint on society. There will always be a dominant or-
der. The third is the issue of collective versus individual
rights. Mitchell relegates the former to a ‘‘long-standing
American distrust’’ (p. 58), but collective rights need to
be brought to the surface of the argument. On this and
my other points, more could have been written.
Finally, Mitchell leans precariously close to a proce-
duralism that elevates popular struggles over substantive
consequences. In taking this position, he is judicious yet
less than helpful. I would have liked him to have taken
on this issue, been even more critical and, bluntly, more
political; not all outcomes are desirable and an un-
constrained process is not always a solution.
This is an outstanding book. Even if one disagrees with
Mitchell’s politics, his analysis is compelling. It takes a
supple mind to manage the intricacies of public space,
law, and democracy and a serious and thoughtful scholar
to produce such an impressive book. In the end, legal
rights and the state matter. Without inclusive access to
public space, democracy is weakened. If only those who
embrace the prevailing order are allowed to be in public,
then only those who adhere to its strictures will be seen.
Tolerance will become cosmetic. Dissent will be tamed.
The dispossessed will multiply. Racism will thrive.
Key Words: public space, rights, law, homelessness.
References
Caro, R. A. 2003. Master of the Senate: The years of Lyndon
Johnson. New York: Vintage.
Fredrickson, G. M. 2002. Racism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Tilly, C. 1998. Durable inequality. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
increasing engagement with moral issues. Whereas some
research conducted under the rubric of ‘‘moral geog-
 Book Reviews
raphies’’ (‘‘landscapes’’ or ‘‘locations’’) was not strongly
linked to philosophy, the broader movement involved an
exploration of the interface of geography with the field of
ethics, or moral philosophy (Proctor and Smith 1999;
Smith 2000; see also Lee and Smith 2004). The aim was
more to identify common ground between these dis-
ciplines and to stress the moral and ethical significance
of geographical context (including that of the natural
environment), than to claim advances in what might be
thought of as geographical theory.
The work of Robert Sack is different. While making a
sustained contribution to the general development of
links between the geographical and the moral, he has put
morality at the center of what it is to be a geographical
agent, or homo geographicus (Sack 1997). What is more,
he has insisted on offering a specifically geographical
theory of morality in his elaboration of the moral sig-
nificance of place (Sack 1999). The volume under re-
view extends this work and gives substance to an earlier
outline of a geographical approach to the real and the
good (Sack 2002). As he states in the preface, he has
written the book to explain why geography can help
clarify moral issues. His central proposition is that ‘‘it is
good to create places that increase our awareness of
reality and increase the variety and complexity of that
realityFhelp us understand what is morally better and
what we ought to do’’ (p. ix).
Sack begins the first of two introductory chapters with
the recognition that humans are incapable of accepting
reality as it is, so we create places to transform reality
according to ideas and images of what we think it ought
to be. Places have an effect, for the good or otherwise.
There are four underlying arguments: (1) that as moral
agents, humans must be able to chose, to have some
degree of autonomy or free will; (2) that reality exists,
consistent with a type of realism; (3) more con-
troversially, that the good is real, as ‘‘an independent part
of reality that we do not make up,’’ which means that
‘‘we can be realists not only about empirical reality, but
that we can be moral realists too’’ (p. 8); and (4) that the
good is not only real but attractive and compelling. Evil
arises from a lack of awareness of the good.
In outlining his geographical theory of morality, Sack
makes a distinction between instrumental judgments
and intrinsic judgments. The instrumental may not be in
pursuit of the good and may promote evil; the intrinsic
tell us whether the instrumental are morally supportable,
and depend on awareness of the real. This understanding
should be shared openly and publicly. Hence the im-
portance of altruism as opposed to self-interest, in gen-
eral and in the specific sense of gift giving applied to
knowledge. This first reference to the value of altruism
429
signals its recurrence in the text, as an important addi-
tion to Sack’s earlier interpretations.
Chapter 2 elaborates the ‘‘power of place,’’ showing
how place is central to both instrumental and intrinsic
judgments. Adopting the analogy of a loom, he demon-
strates the capacity of place to weave together the moral
elements of truth, justice, and the natural, and the em-
pirical elements of meaning, social relations, and nature.
Connections between the various elements, and be-
tween the moral and empirical domains themselves, lead
to different outcomes and to judgments that may be
instrumental or intrinsic. Over 40 pages of tight text and
18 diagrams of interconnections are likely to leave
readers familiar with his earlier exposition (Sack 1997)
more than ready to move on.
Having set up his framework, Sack devotes Part 1 to
instrumental judgments. In chapter 3 he argues that the
situatedness associated with instrumentalism is part of
relativism. This is illustrated by brief and rather selec-
tive critiques of communitarianism (mainly McIntyre
and Walzer), postmodernism (Foucault and Derrida), and
Marxism, in which he sees the stress on forms of situ-
atedness as constraining moral thought. His difficulty
with these perspectives is summarized in the context of
the role of place and of free will: ‘‘though places have bad
(and good) effects, we are never completely their vic-
tims. We can and must be able to think ourselves out of
them to know if they are bad and what would be better’’
(p. 100).
In chapter 4 it is argued that situated, instrumental
judgments can lead not only to relativism but also to
moral absolutism and to tyranny. Whereas the approach
in chapter 3 remained theoretical, he now elaborates
through examples: the use of place in Nazi Germany,
Stalin’s Soviet Union, and the American antebellum
South. His objective is to show that, in these already
well-scrutinized situations, in which systems of hate,
oppression, and violence carried their own moral justi-
fication, a geographical approach can shed additional
light. He devotes most attention to Nazi Germany as the
exemplar of his approach. The way in which the mean-
ings of truth, justice, and the natural became twisted
into their opposites, as ‘‘(dis)virtues,’’ was facilitated by
spatial strategies of restriction on the movement of Jews
and their confinement in ghettos and concentration
camps and by the role of everyday places such as the
home, school, and church in perpetuating Nazi ideology.
He also recognizes sites of resistance, manifest for ex-
ample in the rescue and protection of Jews in particular
places. The argument is concluded by briefer examina-
tion of the role of Stalin’s gulags and of the slave plan-
tations of the antebellum South. In all three cases,
430 Book Reviews
spatial systems reworked the meanings and mixes of
truth, justice, and the natural as instrumental to a
particular purpose. To attack such manifestations of evil
requires a shift from instrumental to intrinsic judgments,
and it is to these that the discussion now turns.
Part 2 begins with an elaboration of the theory sket-
ched out in chapter 1. Chapter 5 provides a more de-
tailed analysis of the two criteria or values of intrinsic
judgmentsFseeing through to the real, and variety and
complexityFwhich make qualities of the good more
accessible. Lack of awareness, or self-deception, is
implicated in failure to recognize the good and to find
it compelling. Intrinsic judgments encourage altruism,
‘‘which rescues the moral components of place from
relativism’’ (p. 154). And later, ‘‘The variety and com-
plexity criterion encourages differences in viewpoints,
but the seeing through requirement discourages re-
lativism among them’’ (p. 164); while multiple percep-
tions are encouraged, all views are taken critically and
provisionally in pursuit of the good. The argument is
summarized as follows: ‘‘The loom of place allows us to
weave infinite varieties of truth, justice, and the natural;
and intrinsic judgments encourage this variety, while not
allowing the virtues to become relative. This is due to
the regulative qualities of seeing through to the real
and variety and complexity and to their connection to
altruism and gift-giving’’ (p. 191).
Chapter 6 addresses ‘‘geopsychological dynamics.’’
The focus is on the role of boundedness and boundaries,
in the interrelated processes of psychological and geo-
graphical compartmentalization that can facilitate self-
deception and a moral drift towards evil. Sack returns to
the antebellum South and Nazi Germany to show how
the capacity for mental and spatial compartmentalization
helped to make slavery and genocide possible. For ex-
ample, the murder of millions of Jews was assisted by the
compartmentalization of individual actions of perpetra-
tors and of the places within which the victims were
confined; exceptionally, compartmentalization of actions
and place also enabled some people to help refugees from
the Nazis.
Sack finally turns his attention to ‘‘geosocial dy-
namics,’’ or social institutions. His intention is to sketch
the connections between intrinsic judgments and struc-
tures and relations in the social, political, and economic
realms. The scope is very broad, ranging from the social
organization of different levels of places, the political
significance of public space, the nature of democracy,
and alternative notions of value (including a fascinating
exposition of ‘‘gift-value’’). His conclusion is that, ‘‘apart
from general suggestions such as having institutions with
open and flexible territorial boundaries, free exit and
entry, intrinsic democracy, and an economy informed by
gift-value, we cannot specify precisely what good social
institutions would be. This will depend on our own op-
portunity and context and on our geographical imagi-
nation’’ (pp. 265–66).
Herein lies a general problem with Sack’s prescrip-
tions. While individual actions and institutions should
contribute to his criteria of heightened awareness (or
seeing through to the real) and variety and complexity, if
they are to promote the good and avoid drift towards
evil, what should actually be done in particular cir-
cumstances is not so clear. For example, having recently
returned from periods of fieldwork in two countries un-
dergoing transformation involving changing social rela-
tions (Poland and South Africa), I would find it hard to
use Sack’s theory as a basis for recommendations on the
kind of places that should be created there. I would be
better able to suggest what to avoid in such highly
unequal societies, such as gated communities that risk
increasing the isolation of the rich and reducing their
awareness of the wider society. ‘‘Good places are ones
that help make altruism, selflessness and altruistic gift-
giving more likely’’ (p. 181), he asserts; it would be
helpful to know more about what they would be like and
how to create them. As is recognized at the outset, most
of the examples in the book are about bad places. There
is a section in chapter 5 headed ‘‘Evil Places’’; it is sig-
nificant that the only index entry to the other kind is
‘‘Good places in evil society.’’
Sack is most convincing on the role of place in such
contexts as the evil of Nazism, his interpretation of
which could claim to provide new insight. However,
even here his sources seem rather selective; his analysis
could have been strengthened by incorporation of the
work of Zigmunt Bauman (1989) on modernity and
the Holocaust and of others seeking to account for the
circumstances in which Jews were either murdered or
rescued (see Smith 2000, pp. 109–13). Rather less
convincing are his excursions into such subjects as the
moral content of Marxism and questions of value in
relation to human need; both would have benefited from
reference to a wider literature (e.g., Peffer 1990; Doyal
and Gough 1991). Similarly, with his very interesting
ideas on altruism, references to the classic by Richard
Titmus on the gift relationship and by Carol Gilligan
(and others) on the ethic of care are notable by their
absence. If I missed some work I expected to find,
tracing it was made more difficult by inadequacies of
the index, which is inconsistent and incomplete; for
example, there is no entry for the most extensive dis-
cussion of the antebellum South (pp. 151 ff.) or for
realism.
 Book Reviews
Sack’s version of ethical realism might have benefited
from a more thorough rationale. The claim that the good
has a similar real status to that of consciousness and free
will (p. 83) is hardly convincing. His commitment to an
independent good that we do not make up implies that it
is to be discovered rather than created or constructed: a
hard position to defend. And it seems inconsistent to
refer to ‘‘a trueFthat is a morally correctFunder-
standing’’ (p. 156), but shortly thereafter to the ‘‘op-
pressive claim of one view seeing absolutely correctly’’
(p. 164). My attempts to see through to his real good
sometimes felt as though I were looking through frosted
glass. But perhaps I am in the wrong kind of place.
Limitations of space prevent further critique (some
other issues, such as the causal power of place and the
good of variety and complexity, were raised in a review
of the book containing Sack 2002). In any event, to
concentrate on reservations, while an understandable
reaction to a book of such challenging breadth, risks
diverting attention from the strengths of the general
argument, summarized above. This is one of the most
ambitious and important works of geographical scholar-
ship published in recent years. It is a very significant
contribution to geographical theory. And, while Robert
Sack does not claim that his theory breaks new ground in
On the Fault Line: Race, Class, and the American Patriot Movement. Carolyn Gallaher. Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003. xiii and 273 pp., maps, diags., photos, notes, and index. $26.95 paper (ISBN
0-7425-1974-0), $75.00 cloth (ISBN 0-7425-1973-2).
Reviewed by Colin Flint, Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
Especially in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City
bombing, a number of books appeared describing the
potential for more violence from a fringe (and ‘‘wacko’’)
movement of Americans who possessed a strong national
identity but displayed no loyalty to their government.
Akin to contemporary publications that paint a picture
of a world full of crazed extremist Islamic terrorists, be-
fore 9/11 the Patriot Movement was identified as the
thing to be scared of. Carolyn Gallaher’s book is a re-
freshing and much needed antidote to the coverage of
political movements that concentrates upon their
violent threats and acts, their formidable arsenals of rhe-
toric and weaponry. Instead, On the Fault Line is an ex-
ercise in contextualizing the discourse of a fringe political
movement with violent tendencies to illustrate why it
attracts activists and how it is able to claim support in
mainstream political arenas.
Gallaher takes us into the public meetings of the
Kentucky Militia Movement in a journey that utilizes
431
moral philosophy, ethics is surely advanced by his in-
terpretation and demonstration of the moral significance
of place.
Key Words: ethics, good, morality, realism, truth.
References
Bauman, Z. 1989. Modernity and the holocaust. Cambridge, U.K.:
Polity Press.
Doyal, L., and I. Gough. 1991. A theory of human need. London:
Macmillan.
Lee, R., and D. M. Smith, eds. 2004. Geographies and moralities:
International perspectives on development, justice and place.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishing (in press).
Peffer, R. G. 1990. Marxism, morality, and social justice. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Proctor, J. D., and D. M. Smith, eds. 1999. Geography and ethics:
Journeys in a moral terrain. London: Routledge.
Sack, R. D. 1997. Homo geographicus: A framework for action,
awareness, and moral concern. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
FFF. 1999. A sketch of a geographic theory of morality.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 55:26–44.
FFF. 2002. Geographical progress toward the real and
the good. In Progress: Geographical essays, ed. R. D. Sack,
113–30. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Smith, D. M. 2000. Moral geographies: Ethics in a world of
difference. Edinburgh, U.K.: Edinburgh University Press.
personal observation and in-depth interviews to explore
the political visions of the militia movement. Moreover,
being an observer, and at times confidant, to the militia
movement allows for exploration of the fissures and
personal conflicts that are the fuel for the dynamism of
political movements. The reader is given an eye-opening
insight into the organization of the militia movement
as well as the personal energies, feuds, and ideological
commitment that provide it momentumFmomentum
that is strong because of the ideological commitment, yet
simultaneously fragile because of the personal initiatives.
The book’s methodology of observation and interview
allows for an analysis of the discursive strategies of the
Kentucky Militia. The ‘‘fault line’’ of the title relates to
the tectonic shifts in identity politics emanating from
political and economic change. On the one hand, militia
supporters (almost exclusively) are members of the
privileged class of white males who have benefited
from the post-World War Two organization of capitalist
432 Book Reviews
production. On the other hand, globalization and its
erosion of the established labor hierarchy result in
insecurity. In a productive mixture of regulation theory
and identity politics, Gallaher offers a poststructuralist
account combined with evident Marxist sympathies.
The result is the definition of a political terrain in which
working-class males face uncertainty as a result of their
class position and resort to a cultural politics of su-
premacy and privilege based on their race.
The analytical component of the book concentrates
upon two political issues in Kentucky in the 1990s and
their use by the militia movement: the legalization of
hemp and the designation of a biosphere. Patriots argue
that hemp, which has a long history of production in
Kentucky, should be legalized to allow tobacco farmers to
diversify their crops. The biosphere is actually an area of
natural beauty in the state owned by the U.S. Forest
Service and managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Claims by the militia movement that the land was to be
owned by the United Nations via the seizure of private
property were false. Both of these topics are explored,
with generous contextualizing background coupled with
precise interpretation of interviews with prominent
Kentucky militiamen. The key conclusion drawn by the
author is that the discourse of patriotism provokes re-
gressive political mobilization based on national-cultural
superiority and difference: mobilization of a progressive
class-based politics is, consequently, doused.
I read the book in three ways. Readers are offered a
sense of voyeurism as they follow a researcher at the
beginning of her career picking her way through an alien
(and somewhat scary) political terrain while, at the same
time, trying to learn professional research skills. The
portrayal of Gallaher’s attendance at her first militia
meeting is a compelling account of a valiant attempt to
apply research techniques gleaned from books and the
classroom while entering an uncomfortable situation.
The tale of research concerns and practices is laced
throughout the book (without being intrusive or dis-
tracting) to illustrate growing confidence in research
abilities and the increasing awareness of positionality and
how to negotiate it. These snippets of the book are re-
quired reading for anyone beginning their academic
journey into qualitative research.
The second way I read the book was as an academic
interested in the political contexts and geopolitical vi-
sions that motivate and sustain extreme right-wing pol-
itics. In this sense, the combination of regulation school
political economy, the identity politics of race and gen-
der, and the interpretation of rhetoric were most
insightful. The description of the background to the
growth of the militia movement, and the issues of hemp
and biospheres in Kentucky provided a foundation for
understanding how patriot positions could be formulated
and disseminated. The conclusion is that, through un-
derstanding geohistorical context, one can gain under-
standing of why far-right movements may be mobilized,
and by examining the agency of the protagonists, one
can see how they gain political support.
The third way I read the book was as an academic
geographer. From this perspective one can be both en-
couraged and disappointed. Encouragingly, the book il-
lustrates how the application of an understanding of
geographic scale offers valuable insights that are not
forthcoming from a political sociology approach. The
discourses of national-racial superiority are manipulated,
and their contradictions masked, by a discursive resort to
the local, the national, or the universal scale, depending
upon the patriot’s strategic necessity. The rhetorical
construction of geographic scale is shown to be an in-
tegral component of political strategy. Disappointingly,
the geographic component is rather buried in this book.
In fact, it takes a geographer to seek it and identify it.
Though a brash waving of the geographic banner would
be inappropriate and detrimental, one wonders whether
nongeographers will leave the book aware of the geo-
graphic framework. To press the point, the back cover
identifies the book as a study of ‘‘social movements’’ and
‘‘rhetoric.’’ I am not arguing for a retreat behind dis-
ciplinary lines and an overt ‘‘geography matters’’ stance.
The book’s strong point is its ability to utilize and extend
social theory and the work of political sociologists, and so
forth. But, productive interdisciplinary engagement must
be a two-way street, and geographers should not be shy
in offering signposts for other travelers.
The author’s political position is made clear
throughout the book. Following David Harvey’s calls for
a progressive, class-based politics in the wake of global-
ization and the explosion of identity politics, Gallaher
laments that militia rhetoric is side-tracking the Amer-
ican working class into a hostile politics of national,
racial, and gender difference. The argument is com-
pellingly supported by the analysis. This political stance
results in some theoretical discrepancies. Categories
of ‘‘race,’’ ‘‘nation,’’ and ‘‘gender’’ are viewed as social
constructs (p. 121) that must be problematized (p. 55).
Class, on the other hand, is reified. Hence, the claim
that class-based politics is a ‘‘solution’’ and cultural
politics is antagonistic (p. 192). The antagonistic nature
of class politics and its patchy record in offering ‘‘solu-
tions’’ is not addressed.
The result of this political position is that the militia
movement’s antistatism is not connected to its aversion
to class politics. Focus upon the identification of the
 Book Reviews
state as an oppressive authority by militia members must
also be discussed in terms of its connection to a parti-
cular historical and actual manifestation of class poli-
ticsFStalinism. Hence, militia ideology connects the
state with a particular vision of class politics, and so
anticommunism is an obvious partner to identification of
the UN and federal government as oppressive institu-
tions. Such connections in militia ideology require the
interrogation of the manifestations of class politics with
the same rigor that white supremacy is attacked.
I left the book with an insight into the ideology, or-
ganization, and daily politics of the militia movement.
The book also provided material to illustrate how the
social construction of scale is an integral component of
political activism. In addition, Gallaher shows how the
A Companion to Political Geography. John Agnew, Katharyne Mitchell, and Gerard Toal, eds. Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2003. xii and 494 pp., notes, references, and index. $99.95 cloth (ISBN 0-631-22031-3).
Reviewed by Virginie Mamadouh, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands.
A companion is a rather odd type of book. Neither an
introductory textbook nor a dictionary, it is definitively
more ambitious than the average collection of essays. It
offers a state-of-the-art review of a discipline, with col-
lective authorship and expertise to guarantee relevance,
comprehensiveness, and authority. The aim of the series
to which this volume belongsFBlackwell Companions to
GeographyFis to provide ‘‘the most up to date and
authoritative syntheses available in its field.’’ The editors
have done a great job in pursuing that ideal.
The Companion to Political Geography contains 30
chapters, organized into six sections. The introductory
chapter is rather modest, offering a very brief sketch of
the historical evolution of political geography and in-
troducing three broad currents of thought running across
the field: the spatial analytic perspective, the political-
economic perspective, and the postmodern approach.
This classification was presented earlier by John Agnew
in his Political Geography: A Reader (1997) and Making
Political Geography (2002).
Part 1 deals with five modes of thinking and presents
different approaches relevant to political geography:
politics from nature, spatial analysis, radical geography,
feminist and postcolonial approaches, and postmodern
thought. In ‘‘Politics from Nature’’ Mark Bassin analyzes
physical-geographic determinism in a review of the work
of Friedrich Ratzel, Frederick Jackson Turner, and G. P.
Plekhanov, emphasizing their perspectives on the impact
433
geographic perspective furthers our understanding of
social movement behavior. I was left unsure as to why
militia members, in their geographic contexts, should see
class politics as a progressive solution rather than an-
other form of state power, which served to reinforce
the politico-geographical problem that Gallaher brings to
the fore. Recourse to the political right is not just a result
of clever political commentary; it also reflects how the
darker episodes of class politics act as formidable barriers
to those wishing to define and disseminate progressive
alternatives.
Key Words: social movements, Kentucky militia, political rhetoric,
geographic scale.
of physical geography on the exceptional character of
Germany, the United States, and Russia, respectively.
John O’Loughlin introduces spatial analysis in poli-
tical geography with a discussion of the ‘‘special nature of
spatial data’’ and quantitative methodologies in geog-
raphy. He focuses on five topics: context debates in
political geography, the problem of inferring individual
behavior from aggregate data, analyses of spatial auto-
correlation, visualization and display of results, and
multilevel modeling and scale effects.
Peter J. Taylor addresses radical political geographies,
a highly political school, whose authors would hardly
describe themselves as political geographers. After an
introduction to the radical turn and its flagship journal,
Antipode, Taylor discusses world-systems analysis, the
political economy developed by Immanuel Wallerstein,
and its five main contributions to the development of
contemporary political geography: a geohistorical frame-
work, a relational model between scales, the state as an
institution among others, emphasis on the plurality of
states, and a bridge between different geopolitical orders.
Joanne P. Sharp reviews two challengers to dominant
forms of knowledge, ‘‘feminist and postcolonial engage-
ments.’’ By treating them collectively, she emphasizes
their commonalities: challenging binaries (Us and Them,
Man/Woman), stressing ambivalent geographies, re-
evaluating hybrid identities, recognizing boundaries, and
locating resistance. She concludes her discussion (which
434 Book Reviews
also address the issue of how Western researchers are tra-
pped by postcolonial critiques) with a plea for fieldwork
and regional studies, for placed and empirical research.
In the concluding chapter on modes of thinking,
David Slater discusses the intersections between post-
modern thinking and geopolitics and what they teach us
about each other. Three themes are addressed: the po-
sition of chronopolitics, the reimagining of power and
the spatial, and the call for a decolonization of the
geopolitical imagination.
Part 2 presents five ‘‘essentially contested concepts’’:
power, territory, boundary, scale, and place. John Allen
deals with ‘‘power’’ and distinguishes an instrumental
and a facilitative modeFpower as constraint (i.e., ex-
ercising power over others) and power as enabling (i.e.,
exercising power with others). There is frequent slippage
between the two. Allen looks at three different adapta-
tions of poststructuralist perspectives: geo-power or the
writing of political place, governing the self, and power as
a deterritorializing apparatus of rule. He concludes with
two claims: (1) the instrumental mode of power pre-
dominates in much of the political geography literature,
and, more bluntly, (2) ‘‘geography, arguably, is still as-
sumed to have less to do with the way that power works
over space than does politics’’ (p. 106).
In his discussion of ‘‘territory,’’ Anssi Paasi treats
human territoriality, territories as social constructs (e.g.,
the institutionalization of territories, recapping his model
of territory formation in which boundaries, symbolic
shape, and institutionalized practices establish position
in a larger territorial system), state territoriality, territory
and identity, deterritorialization.
David Newman tackles ‘‘boundaries.’’ He first pre-
sents such traditional themes as boundary typologies and
the functional impact of boundaries. He then turns to
emerging themes: boundary hierarchies (national and
local boundaries), the politics of identity (inclusion and
exclusion), the management of boundaries (such as
procedures for migrants), and the ‘‘borderless’’ world.
Richard Howitt discusses the lack of clarity con-
cerning the concept of ‘‘scale,’’ acknowledging the de-
bates that have appeared in the flagship journal Political
Geography. He then reviews empirical studies of scale
and the consensus view of scale, addressing social con-
structionism and domestic scale, scales of justice, and
indigenous and environmental issues, before drawing
conclusions about the paradoxical character of scale.
‘‘Place,’’ the fifth and last concept, is discussed by
Lynn Staeheli. She distinguished five conceptualizations
of place: place as physical location or site, place as a
cultural and/or social location, place as context, place as
constructed over time, and place as a social process. She
then turns to place and political studies to underline the
neglect of place in political geography. She presents four
ways in which place is implicated in political struggle:
politics about place (e.g., NIMBY attitudes), politics in
place (place as context), politics as the construction
of place (e.g., nationalism), and politics deploying place
(e.g., protests transgressing places). In her conclusion
she considers three explanations for the fuzziness of the
concept of place, its centrality to political geography not
withstanding.
The remaining sections of the book addressed topical
issues. Part 3 covers critical geopolitics. It consists of
five chapters dealing with five different types of geo-
politics that are ranked chronologically. Gerry Kearns
addresses imperial geopolitics (American visions at the
dawn of the American century) with a comparison of
the geopolitical visions of Mackinder, Wilson, and Lenin.
Wolfgang Natter considers geopolitics in Nazi Germany,
focusing on Karl Haushofer and the Zeitschrift für Geo-
politik. Klaus Dodds addresses Cold War geopolitics with
an account of the practical geopolitics of the American
government, formal geopolitics, and popular geopolitics.
Timothy Luke presents postmodern geopolitics with a
case study of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, highlighting the
vulnerabilities of the ‘‘risk society,’’ the culture war, and
globalization. The closing chapter by Paul Routledge
addresses ‘‘anti-geopolitics,’’ a term (introduced earlier in
The Geopolitics Reader, edited by Ó Tuathail et al. [1998])
for counterhegemonic struggles, against both the mate-
rial geopolitical power of states and their representations.
Routledge’s overview deals with colonial and Cold War
antigeopolitics and antigeopolitics in the ‘‘new world
order.’’
Part 4, ‘‘States, Territory and Identity,’’ includes five
chapters. Vladimir Kolossov considers ‘‘identities and
territorialities in the post-Soviet space,’’ analyzing mul-
tiple, nested, and shifting ethnic and state identities, as
well as considering several examples of the politics
of identity maintenance and manipulation. Michael J.
Shapiro discusses nation-states, especially the con-
solidation of the centripetal and centrifugal forces in
U.S. nation building, nationhood as state practice that
considers state initiatives and oppositional forms of
scripting national cultures (France, Somalia), and the
state as territorial and biopolitical enterprise. Karen Till
explores places of memory, topographies and sites of
social memory, national imaginaries, political regimes,
and cityscapes before dealing with conflicts over national
places of memory. In ‘‘boundaries in question,’’ Sam-
karan Krishna argues that the geopolitical imaginaire
depends on our location. From a postcolonial place, one
is more receptive to events in the South. His essay
 Book Reviews
suggests that we might expect a ‘‘resurgent and chauvi-
nistic celebration of national identity’’ (pp. 310–11)
and not the demise of the nation-state expected in the
North. Matthew Sparke and Victoria Lawson tackle the
issue of ‘‘entrepreneurial geographies of global-local
governance.’’ They contrast geoeconomics with geopo-
litics in their analyses of the promotional political geo-
graphies of Cascadia and the managerial political
geographies of the Fair Labor Association.
Part 5 presents ‘‘geographies of political and social
movements’’ in five chapters on different types of move-
ments. Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie start with
representative democracy and electoral processes, a
traditional theme of political geography. Colin Williams
deals with regionalist or nationalist parties in the Eur-
opean Union, considering differences in regional and
local democracy, state traditions, and central-local rela-
tions in the EU member states. Scott Appleby introduces
‘‘fundamentalist and nationalist religious movements’’;
extremist movements are defined as those sacralizing
religion, land, and nation. Eleonore Kofman discusses
rights and citizenship in a presentation of new agendas
that involve gender, migration, and cultural diversity.
Gill Valentine brings in sexual politics, establishing the
exclusionary practices of citizenship regarding gays and
lesbians, and exploring the sexual politics of (in)toler-
ance, (in)equality, and subversion, in the United King-
dom and the United States.
The final section, containing only four chapters, is
entitled ‘‘Geographies of Environmental Politics.’’ Noel
Castree opens with the ‘‘geopolitics of nature,’’ pre-
senting a framework for the analysis of environmental
geopolitics in the post-Cold War world, and introducing
three responses to transnational environmental pro-
blems: the realist, the liberal-pluralist, and the critical.
Simon Dalby continues with ‘‘green geopolitics’’ and the
impact of Northern lifestyles in the South. Brendan
Gleeson and Nicholas Low address the grassroots
movement for environmental justice in the United
States, its internationalization, and its globalization.
Karen Litfin closes the book with a chapter on ‘‘planetary
politics,’’ dealing with efforts to address environmental
problems that are planetary in scope (stratospheric ozone
depletion, global climate change) and drawing lessons for
planetary politics.
This companion is hardly comparable to any book
already available. It features outstanding and original
contributions (only a single chapter has been published
earlier), very different in scope. Some are review articles,
some introduce a specific approach; still others discuss
one or more case studies. The 35 authors are out-
standing academics, geographers as well as political sci-
435
entists, mostly based in U.S. and U.K. universities (apart
from three Australians and a Canadian, there is an Is-
raeli, a Russian, and a Finnish contributor), including a
substantial proportion of women, which is remarkable for
this subfield.
There is not much negative to say about this book,
except its price, somewhat prohibitive for students (at
the time of writing, there was no paperback edition).
The substance is excellent. The selection of approaches,
concepts, and topics, however, might be questioned. Is
there a key approach missing? (possibly ‘‘mainstream poli-
tical geography’’ with some account of the work of
Bowman, Hartshorne, etc.); a key concept? (possibly
‘‘state,’’ but also ‘‘citizenship,’’ ‘‘democracy,’’ ‘‘identity,’’
‘‘nature,’’ and ‘‘space’’); a key theme? (possibly, ‘‘con-
flict’’ and ‘‘war,’’ which do not even have entries in the
index).
The internal structure of the thematic sections is not
always clear. Part 4 on ‘‘states, territory, and identity’’
lacks cohesion, compared to the others. The relationship
among the chapters in parts 3 through 6, as well as the
approaches and concepts in parts 1 and 2, might have
been more explicit. There is no consolidated list of re-
ferences, which may be a sign of a lack of consistency;
but considering the range of the field covered, it is more
convenient for the reader to find bibliographical refer-
ences at the end of each contribution.
More disturbing is the absence of a concluding
chapter on the future of political geography. Con-
tributors point at diverging, often incompatible direc-
tions for future progress, which add up to produce mixed
signals to students looking for guidance to develop their
work and thinking. Some indications about forums,
where to monitor and how to participate in the politi-
cogeographical debate, with information about journals,
newsletters, conference venues, political geography
departments, and the like would have been welcome.
Finally, the Companion limits itself to Anglo-American
geographies. Surely it would have been attractive to deal
more systematically with contemporary views beyond
those circles (think of French political geographies,
with authors as contrasting as Yves Lacoste and Jacques
Lévy!). An example of how this can be done is found in
Political Geography of the Twentieth Century: A Global
Analysis (1993), in which Peter Taylor assembled views
from Russia, Japan, Middle-Eastern countries, Brazil,
India, and Nigeria in an epilogue entitled ‘‘Towards A
Geographical Dialogue.’’
Overall, A Companion to Political Geography is espe-
cially challenging. Few political geographers, if any, will
feel equally at ease and skillful in all the domains and
approaches presented in this volume. The editors have
436 Book Review
captured the diversity, dynamism, and eclecticism of
contemporary political geography, so often acknowl-
edgedFpositively or negativelyFin debates about the
discipline. (See, for example, the forum ‘‘Political
Geography in Question,’’ organized for the 2002 AAG
Meeting by Kevin Cox and Murray Low, subsequently
published in Political Geography in 2003). The Compa-
nion obviously provides a more comprehensive overview
than episodic, state-of-the-art reports, such as those
published annually in Progress in Human Geography (the
latest in 2003 by Colin Flint). No doubt, the editors
succeed in their stated aim to ‘‘provide advanced un-
dergraduate and graduate students and faculty both in-
side and outside political geography, with a substantive
overview of contemporary political geography’’ (p. 6).
This volume is an absolute must for any one interested in
this subdiscipline.
The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. Jenny Uglow. New York, NY: Farrar, Strauss
and Giroux, 2002. xx and 588 pp., illustrations and index. $30.00 cloth (ISBN 0-374-19440-8).
Reviewed by Brian J. L. Berry, School of Social Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX.
The self-proclaimed ‘‘new economic geographers’’
have contributed important ideas concerning the role of
increasing returns and path dependence in the growth
of specialized industrial agglomerations, but consign to
‘‘historical accident’’ both the place and time of their
genesis. Jenny Uglow’s stimulating study deals with
perhaps the most important of such ‘‘accidents,’’ the
confluence of ideas, scientific speculation, experiments,
and entrepreneurship in and around Birmingham that
helped spark the Industrial Revolution and transform
18th-century Britain from an agrarian to an emerging
industrial nation.
So much depends upon people and personalities. At
the core were five individuals, nonconformists from
yeomen backgrounds who shared a common interest in
science and who used their position outside the Estab-
lishment to challenge orthodoxies, older traditions of
deference, and the stifling effect of stuffy institutions.
The five included Erasmus Darwin, Charles’s grand-
father, arguably England’s best physician but also an
inventor, entrepreneur, and poet who pioneered ideas of
evolution 50 years before his grandson’s seminal work.
He was joined by Matthew Boulton, who developed the
first great ‘‘manufactory’’ at Soho, just outside Birming-
ham, and his partner James Watt, creator of the im-
proved steam engine that was to replace the water
wheel. The remaining two were Josiah Wedgwood, pot-
ter and canal entrepreneur, and the preacher Joseph
Key Words: political geography, geographies, political theory, terri-
toriality.
References
Agnew, J., ed. 1997. Political geography: A reader. London:
Arnold.
FFF. 2002. Making political geography. London: Arnold.
Cox, K. R., and M. Low, eds. 2003. Forum: Political geography
in question. Political Geography 22 (6): 599–677.
Flint, C. 2003. Political geography II: Terrorism, modernity,
governance and governmentality. Progress in Human Geog-
raphy 27 (1): 97–106.
Ó Tuathail, G., S. Dalby, and P. Routledge, eds. 1998. The
geopolitics reader. London: Routledge.
Taylor, P. J., ed. 1993. Political geography of the twentieth century: A
global analysis. London: Belhaven.
Van der Wusten, H. 1998. The state political geography is
in. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 89 (1):
82–89.
Priestley, a chemist who isolated oxygen and became the
leading advocate of Rational Dissent. Meeting monthly
at each other’s homes at full moonFhence the Lunar
Society of BirminghamFthey extended their fellowship
to the chemist James Keir, the clockmaker John
Whitehurst, doctors William Small and William With-
ering (of digitalis fame), and two idealistic followers of
Rousseau, Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Thomas Day.
The group had a passion not only for science and ex-
perimentation but also for joint endeavor and for the
delights of natural history. What was important to Brit-
ain’s transformation was their sharing of ideas and dis-
coveries and their continuing willingness to apply these
to new arenas. They were so successful that by the end of
their lives 10 had become Fellows of the Royal Society,
expressive of the change they had produced. Uglow
provides a rich account of these men and of their in-
teractions and joint ventures that led both to factory
production and the creation of a new inland transpor-
tation system, the canal network. The list of incidental
inventions and discoveries is immense, including Boul-
ton’s new method of fusion plating (‘‘Sheffield plate’’),
Baskerville’s hard papier mâché, Thomas Warren’s and
Edward Cave’s first textile factory in Northampton (the
inspiration for Richard Arkwright’s successful applica-
tion of the idea in 1769), and Wedgwood’s creative ex-
periments in pottery manufacturing that helped pioneer
industrial chemistry. Equally important was the group’s
 Book Reviews 437

realization that new products required successful mar-
keting. Both Wedgwood and Boulton developed net-
works of agents, first to serve the all-important London
market, and then Europe. Among Boulton’s silent part-
ners were a German merchant, a Dutch financier, and
the founder of the Royal Danish Guinea Company.
Getting products to market required improved trans-
portation. Darwin led the way, investing in a canal de-
signed to serve a new iron mill, linking the site to the
river Trent. Wedgwood noted the success of the Duke of
Bridgewater’s canal in bringing cheap coal to Liverpool
and soon joined the canal entrepreneurs, using his skills
to craft a coalition devoted to improving internal navi-
gation by creating an entire canal system. The efforts
came to fruition in 1766, when Acts were passed in
Parliament permitting the creation of joint stock com-
panies to build canals to link the Trent, Mersey, and
Severn. Construction was to be funded by the sale of
d200 shares, with nobody allowed to own more than 20,
and financed by tolls set at 1 12d per mile. The proprietors
of the Trent and Mersey (Grand Trunk) Canal made
Wedgwood their treasurer. The Birmingham Gazette
highlighted peoples’ beliefs about the role of im-
proved transportation, ‘‘For nothing but an Inland
Navigation can ever put their Manufactory on an
Equality with their Foreign Competitors’’ (p. 115).
Most of the Lunar Men owned canal shares, and, in
addition to Darwin and Wedgwood, Boulton, Watt, and
Small were involved in associated canal-building ven-
tures: Boulton supplied the metal fittings required during
canal construction, Watt developed improved surveying
levels and telemeters for measuring distance, and Dar-
win designed a revolutionary new kind of canal lift. The
Lunar Men were not only inventors and entrepreneurs,
they shared an interest in natural philosophy, inspiring
what Uglow calls an exuberant spread of knowledge.
With greater knowledge came further inventionF
Wedgwood’s development of carriages with improved
spring wheels for use on the new overland turnpikes,
Darwin’s plans for new types of axles and steering,
Edgeworth and Watt’s notion of a steam-carriage, the
improved lathes installed by Boulton at Soho, the hor-
izontal windmill that permitted Wedgwood to grind
colors, and Small’s improved clocks and new watches
and telescopes. Keir undertook mineralogical and geo-
logical surveys, and Watt became a close friend of James
Hutton, the father of modern geology, sharing his in-
terest in surveying and mapping.
There is far more in the book, ranging from debates
over Linnaeus to the role of the new manufacturers
in the political turmoils surrounding the American Re-
volution, their subsequent conflict with the new 24-year-
old prime minister, William Pitt, over tariffs and free
trade, and questions of patents and the protection of
intellectual property. Uglow provides a rich and detailed
account of webs of relationships and interactions that
others might aspire to emulate in telling the story of the
other ‘‘historical accidents’’ that have structured and
restructured the economic landscape. ‘‘New economic
geographers’’ take note.
Key Words: social networks, agglomeration, innovation, industrial
revolution.

Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic: From Britain’s Renaissance to America’s New World. Kenneth Robert
Olwig. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. 2002. xxxii and 299 pp., maps, diags., photos, notes,
bibliography, and index. $65.00 cloth (ISBN 0-299-17420-4), $24.95 paper (ISBN 0-299-17424-7).
Reviewed by Eric Perramond, Department of Geography and Environmental Science, Stetson University,
DeLand, FL.

Few works in geography have successfully bridged
the estranged parties involved in the interpretation of
landscapes. Critical realists and physical geographers
tend to view landscapes ‘‘as is,’’ without much con-
sideration of the ways in which humans are involved in
framing them, whereas the social constructionists have
largely eschewed the strong agency of landscape pro-
cesses not solely derived from the human imagination.
Kenneth Olwig has shed new light on the historical
and cross-cultural complications of understanding land-
scapes. There is, truly, something for every scholar of
landscapes in this book. Following Yi-Fu Tuan’s foreword,
helpful in its own right for those unfamiliar with the
variety and sources that Olwig employs, the volume is
divided into eight chapters, most of them focused on this
very European conception of ‘‘landscape.’’ Readers
familiar with Olwig’s past contributions will recognize
many of the arguments presented in Landscape, Nature
and the Body Politic, but the cohesive presentation and
treatment set it apart from his previous work.
438 Book Reviews
After abstracting and introducing the arguments of
the book, Chapters 1–5 delve into matters of landscape
definition and the roots of the concept in both common
and ‘‘high’’ regent cultures in Europe. Olwig poses a
striking set of questions and propositions regarding the
relationship between German, Dutch, and later Anglo-
Saxon conceptions of the term (Landschaft, Landskab,
Landscip, respectively). This is the first of the author’s
arguments relating to the importance of landscape not as
simply ‘‘text’’ or ‘‘physical setting,’’ but as one of an-
chored polityFa place that is rooted in a form of cus-
tomary law. Controlling and modifying the meaning of
landscape, as is illustrated in these chapters, were vital
interests to the various and competing powers.
The form of reasoning chosen by the author to illus-
trate the shifting utility and power of the term landscape
lies in a close examination of a seventeenth-century
masque, the 1605 Masque of Blackness, written by Ben
Jonson and staged by Inigo Jones. A masque was a form
of ritualized, elaborate, and theatrical production. The
majority of critics viewed these productions with disdain
at the time as a lavish and embarrassing example of royal
waste. This particular masque, however, was unique in
that it served functions that would later provide argu-
ments for the unification of a larger ‘‘Great Britain’’
under one ruler. At the time, James I had just married
Queen Anne of Denmark, and it was her role in the
masque that led to its production and its contemporary
critique.
The portrayal of a ‘‘feminine’’ body geographical and
the double meaning of ‘‘blackness’’ are both important
themes within the larger argument concerning the power
of this masque. On the one hand, this production was
the first to portray and depict Britannia as a female body,
with her various parts composed of individual provinces
and countries. On the other, the malleable under-
standing of blackness allowed for a change in condition if
one was removed from a tropical (‘‘Black’’) climate to
one more amenable to the body geographical (read:
Britain). These were powerfully suggestive tropes and
rhetorical devices, and the convergence of a body politic,
a monarch as the ‘‘head’’ of the body, and the display of
gender as a feminized landscape were no accident. While
James failed to turn his larger dream of a ‘‘Great Britain’’
into a political reality at the time, Olwig argues that the
Masque of Blackness did provide the first use in English of
the term ‘‘landscape’’ with a highly politicized context.
Perhaps the author’s most notable contributions come
through a sophisticated presentation and explication of
the juridical aspects of landscape, the process by which
local, customary (common) law becomes integrated or
bridged to the ‘‘natural law’’ of monarchs. This tense
relationship is explored throughout the work, as empires
and communities struggle over definitions of landscape,
and whether juridical frameworks are to remain com-
munal or, rather, to become cosmopolitan. While occa-
sionally argumentative rather than empirical in nature,
Olwig’s treatise on this linkage of common landscapes
with uncommon power is masterful. More difficult to
extend in logic or interpretation is the author’s attempts
to bridge the classical authors with those pursuing tropes
during the Enlightenment. Historians of the theatre will
be particularly interested, and required, to analyze
Olwig’s use of the Masque of Blackness as the principal
vehicle of rhetoric for substantiating landscape’s im-
portance within the Anglo-Saxon context. The trans-
formation of nature as a natural scene, the shift in
perspective from wild to smooth and back to wild nature
again, is all fascinating material. The variety of texts,
masques, and perspectives can occasionally bewilder
even the interested reader. The fusion of these overall
nuggets into a larger, coherent whole is the real work of
art at the end.
The concluding chapter transfers this material fusion
of landscape as a concept to the Americas, and Olwig
presents some final ideas on the importance of the ori-
ginal European terms in a New World context. In par-
ticular, his analysis and extension of ‘‘country’’ and
‘‘landscape’’ in building the nation-state of the United
States is reflected in the consideration of Thoreau,
Emerson, and Olmstead. The importance of landscape as
nature, or at least natural, is pivotal and elevated in the
works of these three New World shapers of the land.
There are some occasional repetitions throughout the
text although most of these are in the form of transitions
rather than egregious editorial oversights. Some points
are simply repeated because of the multiple strands of
reasoning and the diversity of sources being used by
Olwig. Like mile-markers they are useful in evoking the
interpretive materials built into the sum total of the
author’s arguments. The figures and illustrations used
are appropriate and clearly reproduced, and the overall
production values of the volume are high. This reviewer
found only two typos in the main text, along with a
misplaced reference in the book’s bibliography. Readers
will appreciate the extensive index and the useful and
discursive endnotes that continue side conversations
related to principal sources and debates within the ex-
tensive literature deployed by Olwig. The expanded
discussion within the endnotes is, frequently, just as
valuable as, and occasionally more entertaining than, the
main arguments of the text.
Olwig’s book is perhaps one of the 10 finest books this
reviewer has encountered during the past decade. While
 Book Reviews 439

the appeal will be clear to those interested in issues of
landscape, polity, and the European applications of many
of the associated themes found herein, it may not serve
these purposes for specialists of other regions. To charge
the author with a Eurocentric approach is, of course,
facile. This is certainly one of the main points of the
work at hand: that the landscape concept is a dis-
tinctively European construct. The topics and themes
discussed make this book a natural for any seminar
dealing with landscape. Professional academics and
graduate students will certainly be the main audience for
this highly original contribution, but selections can be
used for undergraduate upper-division courses in geog-
raphy, history, political science, and perhaps landscape
architecture.
Although the aspects of landscape as a con-
ceptualization are uniquely European in this work, it may
serve as a spark for future scholarship to examine the
possible uses and misuses of the concept and framework
in subaltern regions of the world. To what extent this
interpretation is useful elsewhere remains to be seen.
Perhaps the next task is to extend this analysis of the
power of landscape, to gauge its impact on the wider
postcolonial world. Such an enterprise was followed by
one historian in documenting the importance of bota-
nical gardens to the British Empire, in its quest for the
‘‘improvement’’ of nature (Drayton 2000). In combina-
tion with, say, Cosgrove’s (1993) The Palladian Landscape
Fthese three works can provide a multiscalar approach
to underline the interdisciplinary nature of landscape.
While the aspect of nature may remain more implicit in
Olwig’s volume, the implications for our discipline are
clear, as are the future directions for research focused on
the power of landscape.
Key Words: Landscape, nature, nationalism, politics.
References
Cosgrove, D. 1993. The Palladian landscape: Geographical change
and its cultural representations in sixteenth-century Italy. Uni-
versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Drayton, R. 2000. Nature’s government: Science, imperial Britain,
and the ‘‘improvement’’ of the world. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.

An Introduction to Geographical Economics: Trade, Location and Growth. Steven Brakman, Harry Garretsen, and
Charles van Marrewijk. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xxiii and 350 pp., maps, diags., appendices,
and index. $90.00 cloth (ISBN 0-521-77039-4); $33.00 paper (ISBN 0-521-77967-7).
Reviewed by Patrick O’Sullivan, Department of Geography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL.

Just over 20 years ago, Allen Scott reviewed a book
for The Professional Geographer that purported to be
about geographical economics. He used the opportunity
to disparage neoclassical theorizing and hinted that he
was off on another path. We might call those who ac-
companied him new economic geographers. That is
when I decided to shift my attention to something else
entirely, and I have been on the sidelines of economic
geography ever since. This does, however, provide per-
spective. What Brakman, Garretson, and Marrewijk’s
book makes plain is the gulf that separates Scott and the
new economic geographers from the economic main-
stream. Scott’s departure coincided with the arrival of a
major figure on the geographic scene and the beginnings
of what is called geographical economics in this book.
Twenty years ago Paul Krugman modified the Dixit-
Stiglitz monopolistic competition, general equilibrium
model to include the interaction of transport costs and
increasing returns to scale, and used this to rationalize
the home market effect. A decade later, inspired by
Michael Porter’s description of locational advantage at
the international level, Krugman developed his model
to explore the clustering effect. It seems that the new
economic geographers dismiss these efforts, as they do
neoclassical formality, as too crude and oversimplified to
apply to policy issues, given the world’s complexities. I
even heard a new economic geographer refer to such
theorizing as ‘‘that mathematical shit.’’ What their dis-
course has contributed to clarifying choices is not clear.
They obviously find transparent argument and strict
rules of engagement oppressive. It is much easier to in-
voke ideological incompatability.
The first three chapters of this book provide context
by looking at trade and development theory, urban and
regional economics, and spatial economic models. This
sets the scene for the exposition of Krugman’s geog-
raphical economics model. Its equilibrating character-
istics are explored by simulation. Theoretical outcomes
are matched with empirical evidence on agglomeration,
the home market effect, and regional wage differences.
The basic model is tweaked and extended to respond to
criticisms of oversimplification concerning transport costs,
440 Book Reviews
production structure, and expectations. The model’s
insights are brought to bear on questions of urban struc-
ture and congestion, globalization, agglomeration, trade,
and growth. The final chapter assesses possible policy
applications and what geographical economics has added
to our fund of wisdom. Limitations are admitted, and
responses to this critique are demonstrated.
It is a pity that Kuhn’s paradigm shift is deemed to
have ousted Popper’s conjecture and refutation as the
way knowledge advances. It is, of course, much easier to
dismiss than to refute. Refutation requires that you un-
derstand what was being said. There will be a temptation
for geographers to ignore this book despite its title. On
page 57 the authors quote Mark Blaug’s opinion that
location did not get into Marshall’s Principles and thereby
become part of the received wisdom for economics be-
cause Ricardo wrote lucidly on soil fertility, while poor
old von Thünen was obtuse and obscure with his relative
The Consumption Reader. David B. Clarke, Marcus A. Doel, and Kate M. L. Housiaux, eds. London and New York:
Routledge, 2003. 288 pp., biblio and index. $29.95 paper (ISBN 0-415-21377-0).
Reviewed by Andrew Currah, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Over the past decade or so, interest in consumption
has blossomed across the arts, humanities, and social
sciences. At the same time, the momentum of the
‘‘cultural turn’’ has progressively dismantled traditional
disciplinary boundaries, leading to the development of
new, multiperspective approaches in consumption stu-
dies. However, the result of this cross-fertilization of
ideas is a vast and labyrinthine literature, in which many
students and researchers soon become lost. This is
understandable, given the wide-ranging scope of con-
sumption studies and the intense level of debate that
continues to surround even the smallest aspects of life in
consumer society. In this context, as in other expansive
fields of study, the ‘‘reader’’ format has become in-
creasingly popularFboth as a ‘‘one-stop revision shop’’
for students and as a roadmap that researchers, lecturers,
and others can consult to (re)acquaint themselves with
the key themes and debates.
The Consumption Reader succeeds in both of these
respects. It makes a unique and vital contribution to the
interdisciplinary field of consumption studies, given
the breadth of its scope, its comprehensive structure,
and its accessible, yet thought-provoking style. It also
marks one of the first attempts by a group of human
geographers to chart and document the sprawling field of
consumption studies in a reader format. The book draws
location as a determinant of rent. I am afraid this book
stands in the same danger. It is hard to wade through.
I went off the scale with my nod coefficient over this. I
kept putting it off. It is difficult to imagine many new
economic geographers taking it on. It is written as a text
for advanced undergraduates and graduates in eco-
nomics, familiar with optimization methods in mathe-
matics. I think professing economic geographers and
doctoral students in the field ought to acquire the
wherewithal to understand what is going on here, as
the authors say, ‘‘if only to get to know what they dis-
agree with when it comes to the analysis of the location
of economic activity.’’ Its contribution needs to be ad-
dressed and contested in its own terms. These are
questions too important to leave to the economists
alone.
Key Words: Geography, economics, trade, agglomeration.
upon an original and eclectic mix of material, in-
corporating work from research leaders, as well as some
unexpectedFbut equally engagingFcontributions from
other authors. As such, this collection of studies not only
provides an excellent introduction to the key theoretical
debates, but also encourages the reader to ‘‘unthink and
rethink’’ many of the taken-for-granted aspects of the
world of consumption from a range of perspectives, some
new, some old. Overall, the book comprises 38 extracts,
which are spread over five sections.
The book opens with an excellent overview of con-
sumption and how it has been approached in different
ways over time within three groups of literature: econo-
mics and marketing; sociology, anthropology, and cultural
studies; and history and geography. Here, the editors
provide a clear and fluent discussion of the main debates
and show (via bold type) how the authors included in
the reader fit into the wider theoretical and historical
picture of consumption studies. The opening essay pro-
vides a perfect springboard for the following five sections,
which can either be read in isolation or in sequence.
Each section opens with a preface, wherein the editors
summarize the key arguments and triangulate the sub-
sequent readings within a more specific theoretical con-
text. In these prefaces, the editors also craft and mediate
a dialogue between the subsequent readings and their
 Book Reviews
respective authors, identifying areas of consensus, dis-
agreement, and controversy. All of this gives the book
the feel of a many-sided and ongoing conversation rather
than a ‘‘closed’’ text. However, a few illustrations and
diagrams would have been a welcome addition to this
conversation, if only to add some flesh to the theoretical
observations.
Parts 1 and 2 of the reader look at the history and
geography of the consumer society. In Part 1, the editors
stress the need to ‘‘defamiliarize’’ many aspects of life in
the modern consumer society. To this end, the extracts
in this section focus on the complex and multidimen-
sional processes by which consumer society has evolved
over time. Center stage here is McKendrick’s seminal
argument that the Industrial Revolution in England was
predated by a consumer revolution in the 18th century.
This is accompanied by critiques from and Campbell and
Fine and Leopold, as well as extracts on related topics by
Appleby, Bauman, Hunt, and Purvis.
Although the focus in Part 1 is on the history of
consumerism in Europe and North America, the editors
acknowledge the significance of geography and culture in
the evolution of the consumer society. This is picked up
to some extent in Part 2, which raises a series of ques-
tions about the geographical aspects of consumption.
These are addressed in various ways by each of the
readings:
[T]the global reach of consumerism (Taylor); the sig-
nificance of particular spaces of consumption (Schi-
velbusch); the way in which consumption transforms
space and place, displacing and dislocating established
practices (Comaroff; Cook and Crang); the possibility of
places and spaces themselves being consumed (Redfern;
Urry; Zukin); and the role of the geographical imagination
in shaping practices of consumption (Wildt) (p. 79; ori-
ginal emphases, authors addedFbut please note that
each reading covers multiple themes).
Parts 1 and 2 also provide a framework for the re-
mainder of the reader, wherein the editors and the
contributing authors interrogate the patterns, processes,
and practices of consumption. Parts 3 and 4 begin this
task by exploring, respectively, two interrelated issues in
consumption studies: ‘‘subjects and identity’’ and ‘‘ob-
jects and technology.’’
In Part 3, the readings address the nature of the
consumer and the identity of the consuming subject.
In the preface, the editors seek to bypass polarized
conceptions of consumers as either ‘‘hapless dupes’’ or
‘‘purely rational agents’’ and so advance a more nuanced
interpretation that recognizes the relationship between
consumption, identity, gender, and an array of other
441
sociocultural influences. This approach resonates with
the ‘‘cultural politics’’ approach to consumption that has
pervaded recent geographical thinking. The readings in
Part 3 are from the likes of Mohan, Douglas, Hebdige,
Bennett, and FeatherstoneFall of which go to make up
an enjoyable and colorful dialogue that effectively
highlights the key issues.
In Part 4, the reader moves on to consider the objects
of consumption and the technologies associated with
the way the consumer relates to the material world. The
readings contained here recognize the artificiality of
the distinction between subjects and objects and, as the
editors put it, seek to overcome the ‘‘ontological apart-
heid’’ between the two. The emphasis is on the relations
between objects (including how these create culturally
specific meanings) and, in turn, how these relations in-
tersect with consuming subjects. In this respect, Latour’s
article on the ‘‘social work’’ of objects is particularly
useful. But the readings provided by Falk, Kiaer, Barthes,
Miller and Abelson, and Goss are equally illuminating.
Part 5 brings the reader to a close by focusing ex-
plicitly on theory. What differentiates the readings in
this section is the scope of their attempt to ‘‘unthink and
rethink’’ the world of consumption. Quite simply, this
section is designed to give the reader a flavor of some of
the most influential and overarching theoretical frame-
works that have emerged from consumption studies. As
expected, this includes contributions from well-known
authors such as Bataille, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, De
Certeau, Mauss, Marx, Simmel, and Veblen. In parti-
cular, the editors emphasize the relevance of Marx to
consumption studies, even though his work is often
accused of being overly productionist. Rather, as the
extract from Grundrisse usefully reveals, Marx actually
had a more sophisticated conception of consumption
than is often recognized in the literature.
To conclude, The Consumption Reader provides an
excellent introduction to the ever-changing world of
consumption and the varied theoretical approaches that
have been deployed to understand the patterns, pro-
cesses, and practices that underpin consumer society.
Although this reader (like others) is selective in its
portrayal of the literature, and only scratches the surface
of the field, it does realize the editors’ broad aim: ‘‘to cut
a swathe through the various disciplinary traditions and
provide a valuable resource for the growing inter-
disciplinary interest in consumption’’ (p. 20). In this way,
the reader consolidates the existing consumption studies
literature while also identifying new and exciting ave-
nues of inquiry.
Key Words: consumption, consumer society, identity, modernity.
442 Book Reviews

The American Midwest: Managing Change in Rural Transition. Norman Walzer, ed. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc,
2003. xiv and 304 pp., diags., maps, tables, notes, references, index. $68.95 cloth (ISBN 0-7656-1121-X); $26.95
paper (ISBN 0-7656-1122-8).
The Future of the Southern Plains. Sherry L. Smith, ed. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. xii and
275 pp., maps, photos, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 cloth (ISBN 0-8061-3553-0).
Reviewed by James R. Shortridge, Department of Geography, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS.

Although we geographers regard regional economics
as basic to our intellectual mission, it is instructive to be
reminded occasionally that other people study these
same issues. The two books under review here are cases
in point. They address essentially a single continuous
regionFthe rural portions of the Midwest and Plains
that are now facing major agricultural restructuring and
population declineFbut do so from different perspec-
tives. In The American Midwest a group of 19 experts
from agricultural economics, rural sociology, and public
policy offer straightforward remedies to existing pro-
blems. The Southern Plains book, with nine contributors,
approaches these same dilemmas philosophically and
historically. The two orientations complement each
other well, and geographers can learn from each. As a
discipline we also had a voice on each panel: Christopher
D. Merrett with the economists and John Miller Morris
with the historians.
The 12 substantive essays that constitute the Mid-
western book were assembled to educate and advise
state and local policymakers on what the writers clearly
see as a crisis. Agriculture, they say, has changed so
much since 1980 that it has become ‘‘a qualitatively
different enterprise’’ (p. 89). In addition, rural counties
are losing traditional jobs in the manufacturing, retail,
and service sectors. With a goal of encouraging com-
munity-farmer cooperation in this period of agricultural
transition, Walzer assembled papers from experts that
would establish background for the problem, identify its
major facets, and offer possible remedies. None of the
essays has a distinctive voice (most are coauthored) or
report groundbreaking research, but their collective in-
sight into current rural economics is something that all
of us need to hear.
The American Midwest starts slowly and suffers con-
siderable overlap of material. Following an introduction
by Walzer, we inexplicably have three separate chapters
on recent population trends. These are rich in charts and
possibility, but only some of the ideas are developed in
later chapters. Thomas Johnson and James Scott from
the University of Missouri reproduce excellent USDA
maps, for example, that nicely reveal a bifurcated region:
a zone of prosperity near urban, recreation, and retire-
ment areas versus one of isolation and declining popu-
lations in much of Iowa and the Plains (pp. 79, 83).
Another powerful map shows that, between 1990 and
2000, Hispanic peoples increased ‘‘in virtually every
county’’ in the region, even in those where total popu-
lation declined (pp. 52–53). What this new ethnicity
might mean, however, we never learn. Slightly more
attention is given to the implications of having a high
percentage of elderly residents. Surveys show that older
people tend to shop locally and volunteer at high rates,
but no data apparently exist to predict their relative
receptivity to Internet technology and niche-marketing
techniques.
Four chapters that describe specific opportunities for
rural America form the heart of Walzer’s collection.
First, Burton Swanson, Mohamed Samy, and Andrew
Sofranko from the University of Illinois argue convin-
cingly that, in this time of globalization and new tech-
nology, a market strategy that treats farm commodities as
homogeneous products is obsolete; countries with lower
land prices (such as Brazil) will increasingly dominate
this approach. The future for Midwestern farmers lies
with value-enhanced production whereby some auton-
omy is sacrificed in order to gain specialized markets and
higher quality control. Examples include food-grade
soybeans for soymilk and tofu, high-amylose corn for
industry, and various branded meat products certified to
be free of hormones and antibiotics. The enthusiasm of
local people for such new enterprises is rising rapidly, we
are told, with over 24 percent of Illinois farmers parti-
cipating by the year 2000.
A second important way value may be added to
agriculture is by processing products locally. This strat-
egy, essentially copying at a smaller scale what agribusi-
ness giants such as ADM and Cargill have been doing for
decades, has many advantages. It employs townspeople
and allows participants to tap into the 20 percent annual
return on investment that is typical in the food-
processing business (versus 4 or 5 percent for growing
commodities). Success in this arena often comes through
the establishment of a new generation cooperative
 Book Reviews
(NGC), in which closed membership and tradeable
shares guarantee stability and reliability. About 80 of
these organizations existed in 1999, including the
Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative, the Da-
kota Growers NGC, and many ethanol plants. According
to authors Merrett and Walzer, the future looks bright.
The remaining ‘‘remedy’’ chapters are broader in
scope and more general in tone. Lee Munnich and Greg
Schrock from the University of Minnesota, for exam-
ple, discuss a series of rural industrial clusters. They
report that, despite difficulties in raising capital,
Goshen, Indiana, northwestern Minnesota, and Wood-
land, Washington, have become manufacturing centers
for recreational vehicles, snowmobiles, and fishing gear,
respectively. Success seems to depend on having
‘‘knowledge clusters’’ for important processing or mar-
keting techniques, but each situation is unique and
therefore difficult to imitate. Another interesting dis-
cussion concerns the need for more imaginative finan-
cing in rural America. Raymond Lenzi of Southern
Illinois University argues that the scale of development
necessary in the current economy often requires bigger
investments than rural banks or the Small Business
Administration can manage on their own. He re-
commends the creation of public-private cooperative
ventures that, by accepting somewhat lower rates of
return on their capital than normal, will help to build
regional self-esteem and encourage other investors.
The pragmatic approach of the agricultural econo-
mists has much to recommend it. Before converting
completely, however, I began to read The Future of the
Southern Plains. This volume, a collection of stories in-
stead of charts, turns out to be nearly a perfect coun-
ternarrative to the Midwest book, and equally as
valuable for anybody interested in America’s rural
heartland today.
Historian Sherry Smith’s compilation is more unified
and tightly argued than Walzer’s effort. This is partly
because all eight papers in it originated at an interactive
symposium held at her Southern Methodist University.
Smith introduces the collection with a personal story
about how novelist Larry McMurtry has established a
large bookstore to revitalize his Texas hometown, and
the contributing authors continue in this classic narra-
tive style. They argue that keys to the future may lie
more in a probing of the deep past than in a close ana-
lysis of recent business trends. They speak about failures
as much as victories and favor solutions via new atti-
tudes instead of new technology. I did not come away
from The Future of the Southern Plains thinking that
historians necessarily were wiser than economists, but
rather with renewed conviction that multiple perspec-
443
tives were superior for regional understanding than any
one alone.
Each of the eight voices that discuss the plains is dis-
tinctive. Connie Woodhouse, a paleoclimatologist at the
University of Colorado, is the least nuanced. She com-
bines a factual account of climatic history over the past
10,000 years with hints at how some of these episodes
(e.g., the droughts of 1845–1852 and of 1859–1863)
may have influenced human history. Three other authors
may be classified a pragmatists in a vein similar to the
Walzer group. Yolanda Romero, from North Lake Com-
munity College in Dallas, for example, takes the issue of
Hispanic immigration noted in the other book and ex-
plains it decade by decade. A key was the establishment
of government-subsidized camps for cotton pickers in the
1930s, which allowed families (instead of just single
men) to enter the Lubbock area in substantial numbers.
The other pragmatists, Diana Olien, from the Uni-
versity of Texas-Permian Basin, and John Opie, of the
University of Chicago, describe the outlook for the area’s
declining oilfields and irrigation systems, respectively.
Both write authoritative essays. Independent producers
now dominate the region’s petroleum business. They are
too small to finance needed research on tertiary-recovery
techniques, however, a fact that probably translates into
shorter field life. The outlook for water is only slightly
better. After 30 years of irrigation glory prior to 1990,
neither traditional nor alternative management techni-
ques has done anything other than slow the loss of what
is clearly a finite resource.
The remaining four essays examine regional history in
a more reflective manner. In a pair of closely related
studies, historian Elliott West, from the University of
Arkansas, and geographer John Morris, from the Uni-
versity of Texas-San Antonio, contrast the bleakness
that visitors see in the area today with a richness that
dominated imagery until recently. West concentrates on
the grassland economy that produced buffalo, horses,
and cattle in such abundance that it sparked trade far to
the east and west. After adding in oil and water, he
concludes that the system worked well until interna-
tional market forces replaced local control. Morris em-
phasizes farming in the region since 1900. He argues that
the agriculture of the past was every bit as corporate as
that of today. The problem is a more predatory current
mindset, epitomized by T. Boone Pickens’s purchase of
area water rights to sell to cities.
Arguably, Jeff Roche and Dan Flores have the best
essays in the collection. Certainly they offer the most
hope. Roche, from the College of Wooster, traces the
history of political culture in the region. Its conservative
Republican bent was created in the 1930s via local
444
resistance to Franklin Roosevelt’s plans to relocate re-
sidents and establish national grasslands. This identifi-
cation, with ties to the pioneer spirit, is likely to die with
this generation and be replaced by ideas emanating
from a more urbanized and culturally diverse population.
The Flores argument is grander still. Like Elliott West,
he contrasts an enthusiasm for the land in the past
with the negativism of today. The difference, he writes
from the University of Montana, is likely because we now
have dismantled a magnificent natural ecosystem, and
with it, the freedom and awe that early visitors per-
ceived. Can such glory be reestablished? He says yes and
Book Reviews
points out that local people are at last beginning to
embrace the Poppers’ concept of a buffalo commons.
Only time will tell whether or not this attitude will
persist, but the rapid growth of acreage in the govern-
ment’s Conservation Reserve Program plus enthusiasm
for such initiatives as the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative
and local land trusts all augur well for those of us who
always have sensed the sublime in this part of the world.
Key Words: economic development, Great Plains, Midwest, rural
economy.