This is a novel interpretation of the relationship between consumerism, commercialism, and imperialism during the first empire building era of America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unlike other empires in history, which were typically built on military power, the first American empire was primarily a commercial one, dedicated to pushing products overseas and dominating foreign markets. While the American government was important, it was the great capitalist firms of America a " Heinz, Singer, McCormick, Kodak, Standard Oil a " that drove the imperial process, explicitly linking the purchase of consumer goods overseas with 'civilization'. Their persistent message to America's prospective customers was, 'buy American products and join the march of progress'. Domosh also explores how the images of peoples overseas conveyed through goods elevated America's sense of itself in the world.

This is a novel interpretation of the relationship between consumerism, commercialism, and imperialism during the first empire building era of America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unlike other empires in history, which were typically built on military power, the first American empire was primarily a commercial one, dedicated to pushing products overseas and dominating foreign markets. While the American government was important, it was the great capitalist firms of America a " Heinz, Singer, McCormick, Kodak, Standard Oil a " that drove the imperial process, explicitly linking the purchase of consumer goods overseas with 'civilization'. Their persistent message to America's prospective customers was, 'buy American products and join the march of progress'. Domosh also explores how the images of peoples overseas conveyed through goods elevated America's sense of itself in the world.

This textbook actually shows your students what real life geographers do. How they are able to conduct different types of research, develop new insights and teach us more about the world through a geographer's viewpoint. These are all skills that can then be applied in a wide range of academic and professional areas. With chapters organised into 5 different themes, you can choose which areas of the text you wish to focus on, including (mobility, region, globalization, nature-culture, cultural landscape). You can also introduce your students to a number of fascinating contemporary topics, such as vampire tourism, the rise of the LBGT districts, texting and language modification. Contemporary Human Geography is available with LaunchPad. LaunchPad combines an interactive ebook with high-quality multimedia content and ready-made assessment options, including LearningCurve adaptive quizzing. See `Instructor Resources' and `Student Resources' for further information.

More than any other book for the introductory human geography course, Contemporary Human Geography shows what geographers actually do - how they conduct research, develop new insights, teach us about the world from a geographer's perspective, and apply their skills in a wide range of academic and professional pursuits. With each chapter organized by five themes (region, mobility, globalization, nature-culture, cultural landscape), Contemporary Human Geography introduces students to geography concepts through fascinating topics such as the distribution of college sports, the relationship of beauty pageants and cultural identity, texting and language modification, and more, continually reinforcing geographers' contributions to our understanding of how we live in a globalized, modern world. The authors frame this coverage using specific learning objectives to help students focus on essential concepts and prepare for class discussions, assignments, and exams. Contemporary Human Geography is now supported in Achieve, Macmillan's new online learning platform. Achieve is the culmination of years of development work put toward creating the most powerful online learning tool for Geography students. It houses all of our renowned assessments, multimedia assets, e-books, and instructor resources in a powerful new platform.

Disturbing Development in the Jim Crow South documents how Black employees of the cooperative extension service of the USDA practiced rural improvement in ways that sustained southern Black farmers' lives and livelihoods in the early decades of the twentieth century, resisting the white supremacy that characterized the Jim Crow South. Mona Domosh details the various mechanisms-the transformation of home demonstration projects, the development of a movable school, and the establishment of Black landowning communities-through which these employees were able to alter USDA's mandates and redirect its funds. These tweakings and translations of USDA directives enabled these employees to support poor Black farmers by promoting food production, health care, and land and home ownership, thus disturbing a system of plantation agriculture that relied on the devaluing of Black lives. Through the documentation of these efforts, Domosh uncovers an important and previously unknown episode in the long history of international development that highlights the roots of liberal development schemes in the anti-Black racism that constituted plantation agriculture and illustrates how racist systems can be quietly and subtly resisted by everyday people working within the confines of white supremacy.

Disturbing Development in the Jim Crow South documents how Black employees of the cooperative extension service of the USDA practiced rural improvement in ways that sustained southern Black farmers' lives and livelihoods in the early decades of the twentieth century, resisting the white supremacy that characterized the Jim Crow South. Mona Domosh details the various mechanisms-the transformation of home demonstration projects, the development of a movable school, and the establishment of Black landowning communities-through which these employees were able to alter USDA's mandates and redirect its funds. These tweakings and translations of USDA directives enabled these employees to support poor Black farmers by promoting food production, health care, and land and home ownership, thus disturbing a system of plantation agriculture that relied on the devaluing of Black lives. Through the documentation of these efforts, Domosh uncovers an important and previously unknown episode in the long history of international development that highlights the roots of liberal development schemes in the anti-Black racism that constituted plantation agriculture and illustrates how racist systems can be quietly and subtly resisted by everyday people working within the confines of white supremacy.

Historical geography is an active, theoretically-informed and vibrant field of study within modern geography, with strong interdisciplinary connections with the humanities and the social sciences. The SAGE Handbook of Historical Geography provides an international and in-depth overview of the field with chapters that examine the history, present condition and future significance of historical geography in relation to recent developments and current research. The Handbook is in two volumes, divided across nine parts. Volume One includes commentaries on the history and geography of historical geography, and reviews how historical geographers have considered the appropriation, management and representation of landscape, the changing geographies of property, land, money and financial capital, and the demographic, medical and political analysis of the world's growing and mobile population. Volume Two shows how historical geographers have made significant contributions to geopolitical debates about the relationships between nation-states and empires, to environmental challenges posed by human interaction with the natural world, to studies of the cultural, intellectual and political implications of modern science and technology, and to investigations of communicative action, artefacts, performances and representations. The final part reviews the methodological and ethical challenges of historical geography as a publicly engaged research practice. Part 1: Histories and Geographies Part 2: Land and Landscapes Part 3: Property and Money Part 4: Population and Mobility Part 5: Territory and Geopolitics Part 6: Environment and Nature Part 7: Science and Technology Part 8: Meaning and Communication Part 9: Studies in Practice

`I never expected to call a handbook compulsive reading, but this wonderful volume changed all my preconceptions of what cultural geographers can do. Absorbing and thought-provoking, this is collaborative intellectual work at its imaginative best; it situates, explains and questions cultural geography as a ?style of thought? and in the process imparts such vitality and joy from thinking in that style that this reader wants to join in. This Handbook can inform and inspire anyone concerned in any way with cultural research today' - Meaghan Morris, Chair Professor of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong

`The Handbook of Cultural Geography lives up to its name. It is a book about where things are, how people live, what life means and why events happen. It should be carried at all times by anyone who is curious about the world. Crammed within its covers is a wealth of detail about the power to make history and shape geography. This is a catalogue of the disagreements and alliances that shape the world, and of the politics (and costs) of engaging with that world.The book is comprehensive yet has depth, accessible as well as experimental, and challenging without being too daunting. Each page contains something that seems highly familiar yet curiously strange. The message of course is that what we normally take for granted is so strange. The achievement is that after reading the Handbook, the world will never seem "normal" again' - Susan J Smith, Ogilvie Professor of Geography, The University of Edinburgh

`A richly plural and impassioned re-presentation of cultural geography that eschews everything in the way of boundary drawing and fixity. A re-visioning of the field as "a set of engagements with the world," it contains a vibrant atlas of ever shifting possibilities. Throbbing with commitment, and un-disciplined in the most positive sense of that term, it is exactly what a handbook ought to be' - Professor Allan Pred, Department of Geography, University of California at Berkeley

`A handbook with attitude and purpose, bristling with vitality, openness, and novelty. Dispelling with fixtures, canons, and retrofits, an imaginative cast in the hands of four of the most exciting contemporary cultural geographers opens up the cultural plural - culture as distribution of things, as a way of life, as meaning, as doing, as power - to a new spatial sensibility concerned with the fluid and mobile, the broadest ecology of spatial surfaces, the everyday lived, and the impetus of experimental forcings. A wonderful display of the confident maturity and originality that contemporary geography brings to cultural studies' - Professor Ash Amin, Department of Geography, University of Durham

The Handbook of Cultural Geography presents a state of the art assessment of the key questions informing cultural geography. Emphasizing the intellectual diversity of the discipline, the Handbook presents a comprehensive statement of the relationship between the cultural imagination and the geographical imagination while also looking at resonances between cultural geography and other disciplines.

The work is cross-referenced throughout and presents a completely integrated overview of cultural geography. This will be an essential reference for any inquiry into how culture is spatially constituted and, equally, how geography is culturally constructed.

Why do cities look the way they do? In this intriguing book, Mona Domosh seeks to answer this question by comparing the strikingly different landscapes of two great American cities, Boston and New York. Although these two cities appeared to be quite similar through the eighteenth century, distinctive characteristics emerged as social and economic differences developed. Domosh explores the physical differences between Boston and New York, comparing building patterns and architectural styles to show how a society's vision creates its own distinctive urban form. Cities, Domosh contends, are visible representations of individual and group beliefs, values, tensions, and fears. Using an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses economics, politics, architecture, historical and cultural geography, and urban studies, Domosh shows how the middle and upper classes of Boston and New York, the "building elite, " inscribed their visions of social order and social life on four landscape features during the latter half of the nineteenth century: New York's retail district and its commercial skyscrapers, and Boston's Back Bay and its Common and park system. New York's self-expression translated into unconstrained commercial and residential expansion, conspicuous consumption, and architecture designed to display wealth and prestige openly. Boston, in contrast, focused more on culture. The urban gentry limited skyscraper construction, prevented commercial development of Boston Common, and maintained homes and parks near the business district. Many fascinating lithographs illustrate the two cities' contrasting visions.