ABSTRACT
If the chapters in this book hold a single objective, it is the view that landscapes and places are constructed by knowledgeable agents who find themselves inevitably caught up in a web of circumstances – economic, social, cultural and political – usually not of their own choosing. Every landscape is thereby a synthesis of charisma and context, a text which may be read to reveal the force of dominant ideas and prevailing practices, as well as the idiosyncrasies of a particular author. Within cultural geography, while this synthesis has been recognized, analytical priority has for the most part been given to a particular view of the cultural context. In contrast other authors have prioritized the role of the charismatic individual. We are arguing here for a charting of a middle ground between the poles of collectivism and individualism, whereby neither individual nor context is privileged but both are dialectically related in the making of geographies. Empirical studies which may serve as guideposts for such a venture have been published in recent years by a number of cultural geographers (Cosgrove 1984; Cosgrove and Daniels 1988; Daniels 1992; Duncan 1990; Ley 1987).
