This collection of international research and collaborative theoretical innovation examines the socio-cultural contexts and negotiations that young people face when growing up in rural settings across the world. This book is strikingly different to a standard edited book of loosely linked, but basically independent, chapters. In this case, the book presents both thematically organised case studies and co-authored commentaries that integrate and advance current understandings and debates about rural childhood and youth.

This collection of international research and collaborative theoretical innovation examines the socio-cultural contexts and negotiations that young people face when growing up in rural settings across the world. This book is strikingly different to a standard edited book of loosely linked, but basically independent, chapters. In this case, the book presents both thematically organised case studies and co-authored commentaries that integrate and advance current understandings and debates about rural childhood and youth.

How do we describe ourselves?

Where have we, do we, will we, live our lives?

Why are the differences between people a source of tension?

How can social change occur?

Social geography can assist in addressing these questions. It provides ways of understanding and living in our contemporary world.

Providing students with the resources to understand both the theoretical and empirical approaches social geographers take when investigating social difference, this text outlines key theoretical approaches and traces the core geographies of difference: class, gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. It concludes by showing how geographers work across these ideas of difference to understand questions of identity, power and action.

Using illustrative examples from around the world, Social Geographies includes:

- Individual chapters on the main theoretical approaches to difference

- Individual chapters on the key concepts of identity, power and action

- Reviews of the core literature, with suggestions for further reading

- Biographies of key contemporary social geographers

- Glossary of key terms

For students beginning human geography courses, or in social geography modules, this book is the essential primer.