Geography 3: Introduction to Cultural Geography

Winter 2011
Tuesday/Thursday 12:30 a.m.-1:45 p.m.
Bunche 2209A

Professor: Lieba Faier

Office: Bunche 1150
Office Hours: Thursday 3:00-4:30, or by appointment; please sign up on sheet outside
office

Teaching Assistants: Chen Chen, Alice Huff, Ago Mantegna

Why do people act certain ways in certain places? Why does the urban landscape
of Los Angeles look the way it does? How can we understand connections among
people’s lives across the globe? What kind of space is cyberspace? If you have ever asked
yourself any of these questions, you have already started thinking like a cultural
geographer. Cultural geographers are interested in the relationships between people and
their environments, and particularly in the cultural and social dynamics of these
relationships. In this class, we will develop an understanding of some of ways cultural
geographers think about the world, and we will gain a basic familiarity with some of the
conceptual tools they use.
The first half of the course will focus on questions of culture, power, and place.
We will consider how people’s lives are shaped by cultural and spatial processes, and we
will explore how spaces and places are culturally, and unequally, made. As part of this
process, we will learn what cultural geographers mean when they use words like “space,”
“place,” and “landscape.” In the second half of the course, we will turn to questions of the
global. We will first consider the politics of environmentalism and assumptions about
nature. Then we will turn to three forms of global interconnection—migration,
commodity chains, and cyberworlds—and consider the kinds of spatial relationships they
involve. By the end of the course, you will be able to answer the question, “What is
cultural geography?”, and you will hopefully see cultural geographies everywhere!

Required Texts
1) Herbert, Steve. 1997. Policing Space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police
Department. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Available for purchase at
ASUCLA)

2) Course Reader (Available for purchase ASUCLA and a limited number of copies will
be on reserve at Powell)

3) Articles linked on course website (Marked with a * below and accessible through a
computer on campus or with a UCLA library proxy.)

Course Requirements:
Reading Assigned Texts, Submitting Assignments, Coming to Class and Section
Prepared, and Participating in Class and Section Discussions are all MANDATORY!
There are no lecture notes available for this class. Readings, lectures, and discussions are
meant to work together. Lectures will offer context, background, and explanations of the
readings; readings will provide foundations for lectures. Films will be included on exams.
You will have trouble passing this course if you try to skip readings, films, or class
lectures.

Your grade in this class will be based on the following components:

25% In-Class Midterm Exam

40% In-Class Final Exam

35% Discussion Section Participation and Assignments: Each student must be enrolled
in and attend a discussion section that meets once a week. You will be given a discussion
section grade that will be based on both your written work and your participation. The
goal of these sections is to clarify themes presented in lectures and readings. They are
also intended to give you an opportunity to formulate and articulate your interpretations of
this material, to explore related ideas that may have been stimulated by your readings and
discussion, and to discuss experiences that your class participation will help you identify
as being geographically significant.

Some Additional Notes:

1) Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated in this course. If either is
suspected, action will be taken in accordance with university policy.
2) If you are having trouble in the course, please come speak with me or with your
TA as soon as possible. Our aim is to create a positive and productive learning
environment for all. A sign up sheet for my office hours will be placed outside my office.
If you cannot make my office hours, please speak to me about making an appointment at
another time. I strongly recommend contacting me at least one week in advance to make
an appointment or time may not be available.
3) There will be no make-up exams given unless you have a medical emergency.
Such emergencies require a written letter from your physician, which will be validated by
the professor. NO EXCEPTIONS.
4) Because of the sheer volume of emails I receive, please be prepared for it to
take up to a week, and possibly longer, for me to respond to any message.
5) If you have special needs and require different accommodations to meet course
requirements, please speak with me at the beginning of the course so appropriate
arrangements can be made.
6) In this course, issues that are sensitive or unfamiliar to some may arise. Our
goal will be to create an environment where everyone can freely express her or himself
and feel comfortable that her or his voice or opinion will be heard. Even if you do not
agree with things others say, mutual respect and tolerance will enhance everyone’s

learning experience. Related, in the interest or respecting others in the class, please turn
off the ringer on your cell phone, beeper, or musical device before you enter the
classroom. Please arrive on time—students who regularly arrive late may be asked to
leave class—and please wait until discussions are over and class is dismissed before
packing up and leaving.

Course Schedule

I. Thinking about Culture, Power, and Place (Or The Social Lives of Place and Space
and the Politics of Location)

Jan 4, 6 Introduction: Place-making and Cultural and Embodied Senses of

Place
What do we mean by “culture”? What do we mean by “space” and “place”? How are
our experiences of place shaped by our cultural histories and our positionings within
various relations of power, such as gender, class, ethnicity, and citizenship?

Massey, Doreen. 1998. “The Spatial Construction of Youth Cultures.” In Tracey Skelton
and Gill Valentine, eds., Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures. New York:
Routledge, 121-129.

Senses of place snippets from around the world:

From Hong Kong:
Law, Lisa. 2001. “Home cooking.” Section of “Home Cooking: Filipino Women and
Geographies of the Senses in Hong Kong.” Ecumene 8(3): 274-276.

From Papua New Guinea:

Feld, Steven. 1996. “Bosavi Aoustemology: Bodily Unity of Environment, Senses, and
Arts.” Section of “Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in
Bosavi, Papua New Guinea.” In Steven Feld and Keith Basso, eds., Senses of Place. Santa
Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 98-99.

From the U.K:

Hetherington, Kevin. 2003. Opening section from “Spatial textures: place, touch, and
praesentia.” Environment and Planning A 35: 1933-1934.

From Cibicue, Arizona:

Basso, Keith. 1996. Selection from Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque, NM: University
of New Mexico Press, 8-35.

Jan. 11, 13 The Rules of Place: Schools, Cities, and Shopping Malls as Landscapes
of Power and Difference
What kinds of cultural understandings and conventions inform spatial formations? How
do organizations of space and place shape people’s experiences, behaviors, and
relationships?

Swentzell, Rina. 1997. “Conflicting Landscape Values: The Santa Clara Pueblo and Day
School.” From Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi, eds.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 56-66.

Rules of Place
Grazian, David. 2008. On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1-13.

Gottdiener, Mark. 2003. “Recapturing the Center: A Semiotic Analysis of Shopping

Malls.” In Alexander R. Cuthber, ed., Designing Cities: Critical Readings in Urban
Design. Blackwell Publishing: 128-135.

Chin, Elizabeth. 2001. “Hemmed In and Shut Out.” From Purchasing Power: Black Kids
and American Consumer Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 91-
116.

Jan. 18, 20, 25 Policing Space: Territorial control and Forms of Resistance
How do formal organizations of power, such as the police, work through practices of
spatial control? What shapes the ways the police understand and engage in these
practices? How can we make sense of resistance to these forms of control?

*Johnson, James H., et. al. 1992. “The Los Angeles Rebellion: A Retrospective View.
Economic Development Quarterly 6(4): 356-372.

*Wines, Michael. May 5, 1992. “Riots in Los Angeles: The President; White House Links
Riots to Welfare.” The New York Times.

*Rosenthal, Andrew. May 20, 1992. “After the Riots: Quayle Says Riots Sprang from
Lack of Family Values.” The New York Times.

*Reinhold, Robert. May 1, 1992. “Riots in Los Angeles: The Blue Line; Surprised, Police
React Slowly as Violence Spreads.” The New York Times.

Herbert, Steve. 1997. Policing Space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police
Department. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Film: L.A. is Burning

Jan 27 Reading day (lecture canceled)

Feb 1, 3, 8 Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion in Urban and Suburban Spaces

How do cultural ideas (about class, race, morality, discipline, hygiene, beauty,
cleanliness, community, and citizenship) shape the different ways people view urban
space? How are suburbs also products of such ideas?

Gregory, Steven. “Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community.”
In The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture, Setha Low, ed. Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 284-298.

Schweik, Susan M. 2009. The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public. New York: NYU Press, 1-
6, 291-296.

Duneier, Mitchell. 1999. “Sidewalk Sleeping.” Sidewalk. New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, 157-173.

Szasz, Andrew. 2007. “Introduction: Inverted Quarantine,” “Suburbanization as Inverted

Quarantine.” 1-8, 56-95.

*Li, Wei. 1999. “Building Ethnoburbia: The Emergence and Manifestation of the Chinese
Ethnoburb in Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Valley. Journal of Asian American Studies 2(1):
1-28.

Feb. 10 Midterm Exam

II. Geographies of Global Interconnection

Feb. 15, 17 Rethinking Universals of Nature and Environmentalism

What relations of power inform the making of “natural landscapes” and
“environmentalism”? How about our understandings of “human” and “nonhuman” or of
“wilderness” and “civilization”? What kinds of “gaps” do these categories involve?

Cole, Luke W. and Sheila R. Foster. 2001. “Preface” and “Introduction.” In From the
Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement.
New York: New York University Press, 1-18.

Spence, Mark David. 1999. “First Wilderness: America’s Wonderland and Indian
Removal from Yellowstone National Park.” In Dispossessing the Wilderness. New York:
Oxford University Press, 55-70.

*Anderson, Kay. 1995. “Culture and Nature at the Adelaide Zoo: At the Frontiers of
‘Human’ Geography.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 20(3): 275-
294.

Tsing, Anna. 2004. “Chapter 5: A History of Weediness.” In Friction: An Ethnography of

Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 171-204

Film: Global Dumping Ground

Feb. 22, 24 The Social Life of Borders

What are borders? How are they shaped through relations of power? How do they
unequally shape people’s lives? How can we understand life in “borderlands”?

Anzaldua, Gloria. 1987. Selections from Borderlands, La Frontera. San Francisco, Aunt
Lute Books, 1-23, 77-91.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2003. “Illegality and the Spaces of Nonexistence.” Legalizing
Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants’ Struggle for U.S. Residency. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 27-48.

*Boehm, Deborah A. 2008. "'For my children': Constructing Family and Navigating the
State in the U.S.-Mexico Transnation." Anthropological Quarterly, 81(4):765-790.

Film: Made in L.A./Hecho en Los Angeles

Mar. 1, 3 Commodity Chains and Identities

What is a commodity? What is a commodity chain? How do commodity chains connect
people’s lives in different parts of the globe? What cultural ideas shape our participation
in commodity chains?

*Cook, Ian et al. 1004. “Follow the Thing: Papaya.” Antipode. 642-664.

*Guthman, Julie. 2003. “Fast food/organic food: Reflexive tastes and the making of
‘yuppie’ chow.” Social and Cultural Geography 4(1): 45-58.

Bell, David and Gill Valentine. 1997. Selections from Consuming Geographies: We are
Where We Eat.” New York: Routledge, 1-2, and 167-171.

*Pollan, Michael. June 4, 2006. “Mass Natural.” The New York Times.

*Pollan, Michael. April 22, 2007. “You Are What You Grow.” The New York Times.

Films: Food Inc. and Life and Debt

Mar. 8, 10 Cyberworlds and Course Wrap Up

What kind of space is cyberspace? How does it figure in contemporary social
relationships today? What kinds of “rules of place” do or do not apply to it?

Boellstorff, Tom. “Place and Time.” In Coming of Age in Second Life. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 89-117.

*Steinkuehler, Constance and Dmitri Williams. 2006. “Where Everybody Knows Your
(Screen) Name: Online Games as “Third Places.” Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication 11(4) article 1. http//jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/steinkuehler.html

Dibbell, Julian. 1993. “A Rape in Cyberspace.” The Village Voice. December 21.