Customer Reviews

Postmodern Geography: Theory and Praxis

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This is a very eclectic and fractured collection of papers, but that the lack of unity does not undermine the overall quality and usefulness of the book is a testiment to the abilities of Claudio Minca as an editor. The purpose of the conference that spawned these papers was intended to forge a praxis and theory that would reunite the geographic discipline across the divide between the new school of humanists advocating poststructural ontologies and the structuralists, particularly the marxians.
There really is nothing unexpected from the Americans in this volume, Michael Dear and Edward Soja are given the first and last words respectively, and use the opportunity to argue that there is really nothing new about postmodernism, and that the rigid marxist prespective is gradually killing geography through hegemonic rigidity. Don Mitchell accuses the postmodernists of bad politics and of a fetishization of faddish theory.
No, the real treasures of this volume are in the European (especially the Italian) contributions, which shine with serene confidence and a real interest in forging a new praxis. When the European contributions are compared with the American contributions, the extent of the utter waste of energy spent on defining ideologic positions in the US becomes embarrassingly obvious.
I would recommend a reading of this collection if only for the brilliant contribution of Gunner Olsson, but the starkly defined point of perspective it provides on the postmodernism debate renders this volume almost essential for anyone interested in grasping why we american geographers are still bickering 15 years after Soja and Harvey opened the debate.