The impact of “Maps of meaning” on cultural geography

Abstract

Cultural geography is barely, if not entirely, unknown in Hungary. There was some interest in recent years, but the authors of the very few published papers about the subject couldn’t answer the most fundamental questions about it, especially about the connection between traditional and new cultural geography. After describing this shortcoming in the first section of this paper, I present a brief history of cultural geography. By the middle of the 20th century, the work of the Berkeley School, under the direction of Carl Ortwin Sauer, raised cultural geography to one of the most highly recognised areas of human geography. The shifts in science after the Second World War marginalised the field, which drifted further away from the mainstream of geography in the following decades. Inspired by British cultural studies, from the late 1970s some young geographers questioned the main concepts of cultural geography, mainly criticising its theoretical poverty.

The first extensive, synthetic work about the new approach was Peter Jackson’s Maps of Meaning (1989). To counter the shortcomings of the earlier attempts by Hungarian geographers to introduce the subject, I emphasize the importance of these criticisms by using this book’s story as an example. Firstly, I present the context of the book with regard to the uncommon conditions of its production. Secondly, I investigate the importance of the approach represented by this work in the scientific scene of the period. Thirdly, I analyse the narrative structure that helped the book gain widespread recognition. Finally, I chart its legacy to contemporary cultural geography over the past 27 years.

As the last of a few highly critical cultural geographic works in the past decade it sparked a heated debate that divided the field into the American “traditionalists” and the mainly British “new” cultural geographers. The debate proved to be formative in establishing a mutually beneficial relationship between the two sides (eventually allowing the dissolution of the dichotomy), and simultaneously drawing attention to the revitalised cultural geography. The book became the primary source of inspiration for yet another generation of cultural geographers, who themselves published their own textbooks in the following decade. Although after 27 years the book is rather outdated as a “contemporary” cultural geographic textbook, it is still useful as teaching material mainly for its significant historic value. As one of the most influential books written on the subject, which represents both the scientific plurality of the field and the momentum of theoretical criticism in the 1980s, its story presented in this paper would be an ideal gateway to cultural geography for the Hungarian audience.