Interest in relations between knowledge, power, and space has a long tradition in a range of disciplines, but it was reinvigorated in the last two decades through critical engagement with Foucault and Gramsci. This volume focuses on relations between knowledge and power. It shows why space is fundamental in any exercise of power and explains which roles various types of knowledge play in the acquisition, support, and legitimization of power. Topics include the control and manipulation of knowledge through centers of power in historical contexts, the geopolitics of knowledge about world politics, media control in twentieth century, cartography in modern war, the power of words, the changing face of Islamic authority, and the role of Millennialism in the United States. This book offers insights from disciplines such as geography, anthropology, scientific theology, Assyriology, and communication science.

"Violent Geographies is essential to understanding how the politics of fear, terror, and violence in being largely hidden geographically can only be exposed in like manner. The 'War on Terror' finally receives the coolly critical analysis its ritual invocation has long required." -John Agnew, Professor of Geography, UCLA "Urgent, passionate and deeply humane, Violent Geographies is uncomfortable but utterly compelling reading. An essential guide to a world splintered and wounded by fear and aggression-this is geography at its most politically engaged, historically sensitive, and intellectually brave." -Ben Highmore, University of Sussex "This is what a 'public geography' should be all about: acute analysis of momentous issues of our time in an accessible language. Gregory and Pred have assembled a peerless group of critical geographers whose essays alter conventional understandings of terror, violence, and fear. No mere gazetteer, Violent Geographies shows how place, space and landscape are central components of the real and imagined practices that constitute organised violence past and present. If you thought terror, violence, and fear were the professional preserve of security analysts and foreign affairs experts this book will force you to think again." -Noel Castree, School of Environment and Development, Manchester University "A studied, passionate and moving examination of the way in which the violent logics of the 'War on Terror' have so quickly shuttered and reorganized the spaces of this planet on its different scales. From the book emerges a critical new cartography that clearly charts an archipelago of a large multiplicity of 'wild' and 'tamed' places as well as 'black holes' within and between which we all struggle to live." -Eyal Weizman, Director, Goldsmiths College Centre for Research Architecture

Edward Said's oft cited claim that Orientalists past and present have spun imaginary geographies where they sought ground truth, has launched a plethora of studies of fictive geographies. Representations often reveal more about the culture of the writer than that of the people and places written about. Yet the study of imaginary geographies has raised many questions about Western writers' abilities to provide representations of foreign places; there is now much interest in Western mis-representations of places (imaginary geographies). This text explores the interplay between a system of "othering" which travellers bring to a place, and the "real" geographical difference they discover upon arrival. Exposing the tensions between the imaginary and real, James Duncan and Derek Gregory and a team of international contributors focus primarily upon travellers from the 18th and 19th centuries to pin down the imaginary within the context of imperial power. The contributors focus on travel to three main regions: Africa, South Asia, and Europe - with the European examples being drawn from Britain, France and Greece. This book presents a unique contribution from geographers - with their sensit

Writes of Passage explores the interplay between a system of "othering" which travelers bring to a place, and the "real" geographical difference they discover upon arrival. Exposing the tensions between the imaginary and real, Duncan and Gregory and a team of leading internationa contributors focus primarily upon travelers from the 18th and 19th Centuries to pin down the imaginary within the context of imperial power. The contributors focus on travel to three main regions: Africa, South Asia, and Europe - wit the European examples being drawn from Britain, France and Greece.

"Violent Geographies is essential to understanding how the politics of fear, terror, and violence in being largely hidden geographically can only be exposed in like manner. The 'War on Terror' finally receives the coolly critical analysis its ritual invocation has long required." -John Agnew, Professor of Geography, UCLA "Urgent, passionate and deeply humane, Violent Geographies is uncomfortable but utterly compelling reading. An essential guide to a world splintered and wounded by fear and aggression-this is geography at its most politically engaged, historically sensitive, and intellectually brave." -Ben Highmore, University of Sussex "This is what a 'public geography' should be all about: acute analysis of momentous issues of our time in an accessible language. Gregory and Pred have assembled a peerless group of critical geographers whose essays alter conventional understandings of terror, violence, and fear. No mere gazetteer, Violent Geographies shows how place, space and landscape are central components of the real and imagined practices that constitute organised violence past and present. If you thought terror, violence, and fear were the professional preserve of security analysts and foreign affairs experts this book will force you to think again." -Noel Castree, School of Environment and Development, Manchester University "A studied, passionate and moving examination of the way in which the violent logics of the 'War on Terror' have so quickly shuttered and reorganized the spaces of this planet on its different scales. From the book emerges a critical new cartography that clearly charts an archipelago of a large multiplicity of 'wild' and 'tamed' places as well as 'black holes' within and between which we all struggle to live." -Eyal Weizman, Director, Goldsmiths College Centre for Research Architecture

The debate about the purpose and practice of historical geography has often focused upon the progress to be made in the discipline through an adaptation to new problems, new methodologies, new techniques and new sources. Originally published in 1984, this volume of interpretative essays extends that debate by exploring in tentative fashion some basic methodological and substantive issues from essentially interdisciplinary standpoints. In any exploration, risks have to be accepted as an integral part of this enterprise. All of the contributors to this book take pleasure in one another's polemical company, and each essay explores a wide field while being soundly based in personal research. The hope is that some of this pleasure will be shared by those who critically read these essays.

During the nineteenth century, Cairo witnessed one of its most dramatic periods of transformation. Well on its way to becoming a modern and cosmopolitan city, by the end of the century, a 'medieval' Cairo had somehow come into being. While many Europeans in the nineteenth century viewed Cairo as a fundamentally dual city--physically and psychically split between East/West and modern/medieval--the contributors to the provocative collection demonstrate that, in fact, this process of inscription was the result of restoration practices, museology, and tourism initiated by colonial occupiers. The first edited volume to address nineteenth-century Cairo both in terms of its history and the perception of its achievements, this book will be an essential text for courses in architectural and art history dealing with the Islamic world.