ABSTRACT
So now comes culture but not, of course, without its caveats and discontents. Urban geographers would do well to heed Don Mitchell’s (1996) admonition that “there is no such thing as culture” in the sense of an ontological thing on which geographers, perhaps despairing of deciphering the economy, can now focus their analytical attention. Mitchell suggested, instead, a focus on the “idea of culture” as an ideological strategy and a medium for the assertion and expression of power. This is a provocative argument that demands the difficult task of uncovering the sources of power (sorry, the economy is still in the equation) and tracing its effects on what Susan Hanson (this issue) refers to as “people’s everyday lives in cities.” Each of the research areas that Trevor Barnes (this issue) marks as signs of the cultural turn in urban geography—research on public space, the culture industry, housing consumption, migration, and the urban economy—entails an explicit focus on power relations and their consequences, although the slide into anecdotal narrative exerts a powerful and dangerous attraction.
