The act of surfing involves highly-skilled humans gliding, sliding, or otherwise riding waves of energy as they pass through water. As this book argues, however, this act of surfing does not exist in isolation. It is defined by the cultures and geographies that synergize with it - by the places, ideas, images, and other representations which at once reflect, create, and commodify this spatial practice. This book innovatively explores the spaces of surf and surf-riding, informed specifically by the perspective of human geography. Based on a range of critical turns within the social sciences, the book explores the locations, relational sensibilities, and transformative nature of surfing spaces, and examines how the spatial practice has been scripted by dominant surfing cultures. The book details how prescriptive (b)orders of access, entitlement, and marginalization have been created, and how, with the advent of new craft, media, and ideals, they are being actively challenged to redefine surfing spaces in the twenty-first century.

Invisible as the seas and oceans may be for so many of us, life as we know it is almost always connected to, and constituted by, activities and occurrences that take place in, on and under our oceans. The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space provides a first port of call for scholars engaging in the 'oceanic turn' in the social sciences, offering a comprehensive summary of existing trends in making sense of our water worlds, alongside new, agenda-setting insights into the relationships between society and the 'seas around us'. Accordingly, this ambitious text not only attends to a growing interest in our oceans, past and present; it is also situated in a broader spatial turn across the social sciences that seeks to account for how space and place are imbricated in socio-cultural and political life. Through six clearly structured and wide-ranging sections, The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space examines and interrogates how the oceans are environmental, historical, social, cultural, political, legal and economic spaces, and also zones where national and international security comes into question. With a foreword and introduction authored by some of the leading scholars researching and writing about ocean spaces, alongside 31 further, carefully crafted chapters from established as well as early career academics, this book provides both an accessible guide to the subject and a cutting-edge collection of critical ideas and questions shaping the social sciences today. This handbook brings together the key debates defining the 'field' in one volume, appealing to a wide, cross-disciplinary social science and humanities audience. Moreover, drawing on a range of international examples, from a global collective of authors, this book promises to be the benchmark publication for those interested in ocean spaces, past and present. Indeed, as the seas and oceans continue to capture world-wide attention, and the social sciences continue their seaward 'turn', The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space will provide an invaluable resource that reveals how our world is a water world.

This book outlines how the theoretical ideas, empirical foci, and methodological techniques of cultural geography make sense of the 'culture wars' that define our time. It is on the battleground of culture that our opportunities, rights, and futures are determined and Understanding Cultural Geography showcases how this discipline can be used to understand these battles and how we can engage in them. Through doing so, the book not only introduces the reader to the rich and complex history of cultural geography, but also the key terms on which the discipline is built. From these insights, the text approaches place as an 'ongoing composition of traces', highlighting the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the world around us, and what our role can be in transforming it for the better. The third edition has been fully revised and updated to incorporate recent literature and reflect the changing cultural context of its time. Retaining its exciting and innovative structure, the third edition will expand its focus into new areas, including updated chapters on ethnicity and race, and new chapters on gender and the body. This new edition captures not only recent changes in the cultural world, but also the discipline itself, offering the most up-to-date text to understand and engage with the cultural battlegrounds which constitute our lives. Understanding Cultural Geography is the ideal text for students being introduced to the discipline through either undergraduate or postgraduate degree courses. The third edition is an important update to a highly successful text that incorporates a vast foundation of knowledge; it is an invaluable book for lecturers and students.

Our world is a water world. Seventy percent of our planet consists of ocean. However, geography has traditionally overlooked this vital component of the earth's composition. The word 'geography' directly translates as 'earth writing' and in line with this definition the discipline has preoccupied itself with the study of terrestrial spaces of society and nature. This book challenges human geography's preoccupation with the terrestrial, investigating the terra incognita of the seas and oceans. Linking to new theoretical debates shaping the geographic discipline (such as affect, assemblage, emotion, hybridity and the more-than-human), this volume unlocks new knowledge concerning the human geographies of ocean space. The book casts adrift stable, bounded and fixed conceptions of space and advances geographical understanding based on the world as 'becoming', changing, mobile and processional. This ontology supports the notion that the oceans are not simply fluid in a literal way, but also in a conceptual sense, suggesting that the seas have their own fluid natures - their own capacities and agencies - which are co-fabricated with social and cultural life. This book features twelve chapters, authored by key academics contributing to this growing field of research. The book is divided into three sections, including an Introduction by the editors and a foreword by Prof. Philip E. Steinberg, the leading scholar in the field of maritime geographies. The first section of the book considers the ways in which different watery spaces from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea have been conceptualized, theorized and 'known' through metaphors, voyages of discovery and scientific endeavour. The second section examines how oceans are experienced; through various activities including driving on water, kayaking in water and diving under water. The final section explores the relations between human life and the nature of the sea as a material, mobile and more-than-human spa

This book outlines how the theoretical ideas, empirical foci, and methodological techniques of cultural geography make sense of the 'culture wars' that define our time. It is on the battleground of culture that our opportunities, rights, and futures are determined and Understanding Cultural Geography showcases how this discipline can be used to understand these battles and how we can engage in them. Through doing so, the book not only introduces the reader to the rich and complex history of cultural geography, but also the key terms on which the discipline is built. From these insights, the text approaches place as an 'ongoing composition of traces', highlighting the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the world around us, and what our role can be in transforming it for the better. The third edition has been fully revised and updated to incorporate recent literature and reflect the changing cultural context of its time. Retaining its exciting and innovative structure, the third edition will expand its focus into new areas, including updated chapters on ethnicity and race, and new chapters on gender and the body. This new edition captures not only recent changes in the cultural world, but also the discipline itself, offering the most up-to-date text to understand and engage with the cultural battlegrounds which constitute our lives. Understanding Cultural Geography is the ideal text for students being introduced to the discipline through either undergraduate or postgraduate degree courses. The third edition is an important update to a highly successful text that incorporates a vast foundation of knowledge; it is an invaluable book for lecturers and students.

Our world is a water world. Seventy percent of our planet consists of ocean. However, geography has traditionally overlooked this vital component of the earth's composition. The word 'geography' directly translates as 'earth writing' and in line with this definition the discipline has preoccupied itself with the study of terrestrial spaces of society and nature. This book challenges human geography's preoccupation with the terrestrial, investigating the terra incognita of the seas and oceans. Linking to new theoretical debates shaping the geographic discipline (such as affect, assemblage, emotion, hybridity and the more-than-human), this volume unlocks new knowledge concerning the human geographies of ocean space. The book casts adrift stable, bounded and fixed conceptions of space and advances geographical understanding based on the world as 'becoming', changing, mobile and processional. This ontology supports the notion that the oceans are not simply fluid in a literal way, but also in a conceptual sense, suggesting that the seas have their own fluid natures - their own capacities and agencies - which are co-fabricated with social and cultural life. This book features twelve chapters, authored by key academics contributing to this growing field of research. The book is divided into three sections, including an Introduction by the editors and a foreword by Prof. Philip E. Steinberg, the leading scholar in the field of maritime geographies. The first section of the book considers the ways in which different watery spaces from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea have been conceptualized, theorized and 'known' through metaphors, voyages of discovery and scientific endeavour. The second section examines how oceans are experienced; through various activities including driving on water, kayaking in water and diving under water. The final section explores the relations between human life and the nature of the sea as a material, mobile and more-than-human spa

Seeds of Fire brings together the work of over fifty poets from the other USA - including Adrienne Rich, Fred Voss, Grace Paley, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez and Martin Espada. Lyrical, satirical, raging and prophetic, they bear witness against the crippling nationalism promoted by the ruling political parties and corporate media in the United States."

In forty-five years as one of Chicago's liveliest journalists for "Time, Life, " and the "Chicago Tribune," Jon Anderson has established a reputation for picking up on what someone once called "the beauty of the specific fact." Part "Talk of the Town," part "On the Road with Charles Kuralt," Anderson's twice-a-week "City Watch" columns in the "Chicago Tribune" seek out interesting and unexpected people and places from the everyday life of what the author calls the "most typical American big city." In the process he discovers the joys and triumphs of ordinary people.

Anderson writes with wit and insight about those who find themselves inspired or obsessed with alternative ways of viewing life or getting through the day. Like the man who started with one light pole, then painted all the poles in his southside neighborhood. Or the founder of Cats-Are-Purrsons-Too, a nun who lives with sixty-seven cats. Or the philosopher who, with no financial success, still publishes a newsletter called "The Meaning of Life." After years of hunting down moments of everyday life that have drama and meaning, Anderson offers a book that has curious power, because all of its stories are true.

Drawn from the best of Anderson's columns, "City Watch" introduces readers to an eclectic mix of social clubs, subcultures, and minor celebrities. From Foraging Friends, a group of penniless ecologists who forage for wild foods in a county forest preserve, to the annual Dumpster Diver fashion show, from the Oakton Elementary School chess team to a group that calls itself Some Chicago Anarchists, readers will discover the characters and events that define Chicago's local color.