A place in the world? : places, cultures and globalization

This is the fourth volume of a five-book series which offers a forward-looking, broad-based course in human geography.

The building blocks of a 'geographical imagination' are presented through some of the principal forces that are shaping the world as it approaches the twenty-first century.

Each book develops different aspects of the geographical imagination, using a mixture of text and readings, through which the authors teach what it is to think geographically. the issues that are explored are at the forefront of global and local relations.

This volume examines the challenges posed by globalization to the meanings we currently give to place and to culture, and questions the nature of the rlationship between them.

Issues of identity - cultural, personal, and of place - and the contest over the meanings of places and cultures are set in the context of the changing geography of social power.

Beginning with international migration, the book establishes a centuries-old context of movement, settlement, and hybridity within which current debates must be set. It raises issues of the rights of movement of both capital and of people, of the ways in which place and culture are imagined and given meaning, and of the power struggles over the definitions of place and culture.

It examines the importance and the nature of the identities we confer on, and draw from, place, and the importance of space and place in the constitution of 'insiders' and 'outsiders'.

The book as a whole is an argument for rethinking these issues and recognising their importance to our geographical imagination.