Mekan ve Yer Üzerine Büyük Düşünürler

by Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin

Editörler Phil Hubbard ve Rob Kitchin, Mekân ve Yer Üzerine Büyük Düşünürler eserinin bu ikinci basımında, bizlere mekân ve yer ile ilgilenen 65 büyük düşünürün çalışmalarını özetleyen, tamamen gözden geçirilmiş ve güncellenmiş bir metin sunmaktadır. Bu kitap, kendi alanında benzersiz olmasının yanı sıra, sosyal bilimlerde yaşanan “mekânsal dönüş” üzerinde etkili olan büyük düşünürlerin bazılarının yaşamları ve çalışmaları üzerine kapsamlı bir rehberdir.

Kitap genel anlamda mekân ve yerin çağdaş sosyal, kültürel, siyâsî ve ekonomik yaşam içerisindeki rolüne ilişkin farklı görüşlerin kapsamlı bir özetini sunarken, esere dâhil edilen her bölüm, biyografik bilgileri ve kuramsal bağlamları, düşünürlerin mekânsal katkılarını, temel yaklaşımlarını, çeşitli ihtilafları ve ilave okumaları içermektedir.

Saskia Sassen, Tim Ingold, Cindi Katz ve John Urry gibi isimlerin de dâhil olmasıyla 14 yeni bölüm eklenen kitap hümanizm, Marksizm, feminizm, postyapısalcılık, queer kuramı, postkolonyalizm, küreselleşme, yapısöküm gibi farklı yaklaşımlara yer vermekte, mekân ve yerin kuramsallaştırıldığı çok farklı yöntemlere ayrıntılı bir bakış açısı getirmektedir.

Coğrafya, sosyoloji, kültüre çalışmaları, kent çalışmaları, planlama, antropoloji veya kadın çalışmaları gibi alanlarda mekân ve yere dair teorilerle ilgilenen herkes için artık bir klasik olarak nitelenen bu metin, coğrafyacılar için olmazsa olmaz bir eserdir.

Genres: Geography, Philosophy

843 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 2004

Reviews

[Arda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very helpful as it incorporated various insight on the subject.

[sdw · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would recommend this as a useful reference guide to have on your shelf if you teach about Space and Place or if you research on Space and Place. I would assign it in a graduate course on Space and Place and would consider it for an undergraduate course.

It has entries on 52 thinkers on Space and Place including Yi-Fu Tuan, Mike Davis, Edward Soja, and Raymond Williams. For each entry (written by different contributors), readeres are provided with "biographical details and theoretical context," "spatial contributions" and "key advances and controversies." There is also a list of major works and a secondary source bibliography. This is useful in reviewing the context for an author's work and placing him or her in a community of thinkers. I particularly appreciated that the authors of the entries connected the thinkers. For example, the entry on Homi Ki. Bhabba discusses the way Gillian Rose employs Bhabba's work.

None of the entries here would substitute for a reading of an article, essay, book or oeuvre. The focus here is assessing the contributions and context rather than providing summaries of the thinkers' main works.

[K Shark · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a complete novice to the application of space and place to the social sciences, I got this book hoping that it would act as a crash course on the topic. That is exactly what it did.

I've gone from feeling frazzled when thinking about the difference between space and place to feeling confident in identifying the major theories, controversies and thinkers in the field.

I can't comment on how useful this book would be to someone who already has a lot of knowledge on the topic, but for me, it's been a time saver and a great starting point for beginning to integrate human geography approaches into my research.

[Andrew]

A short, neat little reference book with impeccable descriptions of loads of major thinkers. As with all "best of" lists, one tends to ask "why is he on there?" and "how could they leave him out?" I'm not going to make these types of critiques in this mini-review, simply because even though I don't expect anyone else to read it, it would be too self-indulgent even by my degraded standards.

If you're at all interested in geography or spatial thought, or are just a social researcher looking for a spatial perspective, this would probably be a great first stop.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really handy collection of essays of key thinkers and their contributions to geo-spatial theory.