Geography 3:

Introduction to Cultural Geography

Spring 2018
Wednesday/Friday 11:00 AM-12:15 PM
Bunche Hall A163

Professor: Stephen Boatright

Office: Bunche A185
Office Hours: Wednesday/Friday 10:00 AM-11:00 AM and by appointment. Please sign up
for a slot on the sheet outside my office or email me to set up an appointment outside my
regular office hours.

Teaching Assistants:
Dian Irawaty Sam Brandt
Discussion 1A: Mon 4:00 PM-5:50 PM Discussion 1B: Tues 4:00 PM-5:50 PM
Discussion 1C: Mon 2:00 PM-3:50 PM Discussion 1D: Thurs 4:00 PM-5:50 PM

Why do people act certain ways in certain places? Why are cities in the United States
racially segregated? Why does the urban landscape of Los Angeles look the way it does?
Where does our garbage go? How can we understand connections among people’s lives
across the globe? 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, you will develop an understanding of
some of ways cultural geographers think about the world, and you 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 learn to identify cultural and spatial processes, consider how relations of power shape
these processes, and explore how they differentially impact people’s lives. We will also
explore how spaces and places are culturally, and unequally, made. In the course of these
explorations, you 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 focus on transnational migration and commodity chains as forms of
global interconnection, considering 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,
hopefully, you will see cultural geographies everywhere!

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

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Course Requirements:
Reading Assigned Texts, Submitting Assignments, Coming to Class and Section
Prepared, and Participating in Class and Section Discussions are all mandatory!
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 (Friday, May 4, 2:00PM- 3:15PM [regular class time])

40% In-Class Final Exam (Friday, June 13, 11:30 AM - 2:30 PM)

15% Discussion Section Participation (see below)

20% Discussion Section Response Papers (see below)

Discussion Sections
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. Response papers should be 300-400 words.
Writing prompts can be found on CCLE; papers are due in the respective week’s discussion
section.

NOTE: All written section assignments are due BOTH on Turnitin AND in
hardcopy. You will not receive credit for a section assignment if it is not submitted to
Turnitin.

Some Additional Notes:

1) You are encouraged to come to my office hours. I am happy to answer questions
or discuss material covered in lecture. Please sign up for a time on the “office hours
sign-up sheet” outside my office door. If you cannot make my office hours, please e-
mail me about making an appointment at another time. Because my schedule fills
up quickly, please try to sign up or contact me to make an appointment at
least one week in advance of the time you would like to meet.
2) Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated and will be handled in accordance
with university policy.
3) 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.

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 4) 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.
5) I try to respond to emails promptly. If a week has passed and you haven’t received
a response from me, do email again as your initial message may not have gone
through.
6) If you have special needs and require different accommodations to meet course
requirements, please speak with both your TA and me at the beginning of the course
so appropriate arrangements can be made.
7) 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
silence your electronic devices 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)

Week 1 (April 4, 6) – NO CLASS Friday, April 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 positioning within various relations of power, such as gender, class,
race, 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 Acoustemology: 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.

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Week 2 (April 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.

Shabazz, Rashad. 2015. “Carceral Matters,” and “Carceral Interstice: Between Home and
Prison Space.” From Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in
Chicago. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1-9; 55-75.

Schwartz, Nelson. Jan. 3, 2015. “The Economics (and Nostalgia) of Dead Malls.” The New
York Times.

Davila, Arlene. 2016. “On Shopping Malls and the ‘New Middle Classes.’” From El Mall: The
Spatial and Class Politics of Shopping Malls in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California
Press. 1-14; 161-173.

Week 3 (April 18, 20)

Policing Urban Space: Territorial Control and Forms of Resistance
How do formal organizations of power, such as the police, work through practices of spatial control? How do
these policing practices impact human social relations and life outcomes? How can we make sense of resistance
to these forms of control?

Rios, Victor. 2011. “The Flatlands of Oakland and the Youth Control Complex,” and
“Labeling Hype: Coming of Age in the Era of Mass Incarceration.” From Punished: Policing the
Lives of Black and Latino Boys. New York: New York University Press, 24-42; 43-73.

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. 2016. “Black Lives Matter: A Movement Not a Moment.” In

From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 153-190.
Wines, Michael. May 5, 1992. “Riots in Los Angeles: The President; White House Links Riots
to Welfare.” 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.

Film: Whose Streets?

Weeks 4 & 5 (April 25, 27, May 2)

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 and suburban space?

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Szasz, Andrew. 2007. “Introduction: Inverted Quarantine,” “Suburbanization as Inverted
Quarantine.” 1-8, 56-95.

Bailey, Marlon. 2013. “‘It’s Gonna Get Severe Up in Here’: Ball Events, Ritualized
Performance, and Black Queer Space.” From Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and
Ballroom Culture in Detroit. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 124-181.

Fragoza, Carribean. 2016. “Art and Complicity: How the Fight Against Gentrification in
Boyle Heights Questions the Role of Artists.” KCET Artbound, July 20.
https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/boyle-heights-gentrification-art-galleries-pssst

Nagourney, Adam. 2013. “As Homeless Line Up for Food, Los Angeles Weighs
Restrictions.” The New York Times, Nov. 25.

Saulny, Susan. 2012. “Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street.” The New York Times
Dec. 18.

Navarro, Mireya. 2013. “In New York, Having a Job, or 2, Doesn’t Mean Having a Home.”
The New York Times. Sept. 17.

May 4 Midterm Exam

II. Geographies of Global Interconnection

Week 6 (May 9, 11)

Rethinking Universals of Nature and Environmentalism
What is “environmental injustice”? Who is bearing the greatest burdens of it? 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.

Pellow, David. 2004. “The Politics of Illegal Dumping: An Environmental Justice

Framework.” Qualitative Sociology 27(4): 511-525.

Duhigg, Charles and David Barboza. 2012. “In China, Human Costs are Built into an iPad.”
New York Times, Jan. 25.

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.

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, Manufactured Landscapes

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Week 7 & 8 (May 16, 18, 23, 25)
Spatialities of Migration: Illegality, Borderlands, and Transnationalism
What does it mean to be a “gatekeeping” country? How did the US become one? How do organizations of
space, such as borders and national geo-bodies, shape migrants’ lives? What kinds of cultural and spatial
organizations are produced through migration?

Lee, Erika. 2002. “The Chinese Exclusion Example: Race, Immigration, and American
Gatekeeping, 1882-1924.” Journal of American History. 89(1): 54-86.

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

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2003. “Illegality, Borderlands, and the Space of Nonexistence.” From
Globalization Under Construction: Governmentality, Law, and Identity. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 171-202.

Lopez, Sarah Lynn. 2015. “Introduction: The Remittance Space.” From The Remittance
Landscape: Spaces of Migration in Rural Mexico and Urban USA. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1-34.

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

Week 9 (May 30, June 1)

Commodity Chains and Identities I
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. 2004. “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.

Week 10 (June 6, 8)
Commodity Chains and Identities II
Holmes, Seth M. 2013. “‘Because They’re Lower to the Ground’: Naturalizing Social
Suffering.” From Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 155-181.

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

Estabrook, Barry. 2009. “Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes.” Gourmet 69(3): 40-42.

Greenhouse, Steven. 2014. “In Florida Tomato Fields, a Penny Buys Progress.” New York
Times, April 24.

Films: Food Inc. and Life and Debt

Final Exam Wednesday, June 13, 2018, 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM