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  1. Dartmouth Libraries
  2. Research Guides
  3. Dartmouth Libraries Guides
  4. Human Geography
  5. Place

Human Geography

This guide highlights the resources for Human Geography, the study of human settlements in their places.
  • Defining human geography
  • Cultural geography
  • Economic geography
  • Feminist geography
  • Migration studies
    • Migration and detention
    • Diaporas
    • Refugees
    • Statelessness
  • Political geography
    • Feminist political geography
  • Geopolitics
  • Population studies
  • Place
  • Travel and tourism
  • Urban geography
    • The City
    • Gentrification
    • Redlining
  • Scholarly communication This link opens in a new window

Reference Librarian

Profile Photo
Lucinda M. Hall
Email Me
Contact:
Evans Map Room, Baker-Berry Library
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-0962
Website Skype Contact: d1128r8@kiewit.dartmouth.edu
Social: LinkedIn Page LibraryThing Page
Subjects: Film and Media Studies, Geography, Polar Studies

Other library resource(s)

  • Cover ArtNowhere in place by Christopher Jordan
    • Book
    Call Number: Sherman Art Library TR 655 .J665 2021
    ISBN: 9781938086854
    A pioneering book on how mindful meditation informs an artist's vision. Photography and meditation are known to facilitate reflection and introspection. They teach us to see both the outer world and the mysterious landscape within. In Nowhere in Place, photographer Christopher Jordan explores the meeting place between meditation and photography and how this mirroring of outer and inner worlds plays upon both the surface of his consciousness and the sensor of his digital camera. ...
  • Resource logoPlace from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Jon Anderson
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    ISBN: 9780199874002
    Place is a central concept for an increasing number of academic disciplines. Once the preserve of human geography, the spatial turn across the humanities and social sciences in the twenty-first century has accelerated and intensified interest in the term. The popularity of place can be understood due to the trialectic nature of the concept: “place” is at once locational, sociocultural, and temporal. Place as a locational concept refers to a straightforward point or position in space, but it is also at once a social concept, drawing attention to the cultural positioning and social relations of the people, processes, and practices involved in co-producing that location. ...

Internet resource(s)

  • Placeness, Place, Placelessness
    • Link
    The website is meant to be a sort of mini-encyclopedia about place as a concept that relates to being somewhere, to here, there, elsewhere, home, roots and rootlessness, disembedding, placemaking, placelessness, branding, and dwelling. ... (Edward (Ted) Relph).

A short definition for Place

1. A fixed point on the Earth’s surface.

2. A locus of individual and group identity.

3. The scale of everyday life.

Until the 1970s all three meanings of place were understood via a ‘mosaic’ metaphor that implied that different places were discrete and singular. However, in the wake of globalization, it became necessary for human geographers to rethink their ideas about place. This is not to imply that places are becoming the same, as if globalization is an homogenizing process. Rather, the challenge has been to conceptualize place difference and place interdependence simultaneously. The ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of a place is no longer clear cut. The metaphors of ‘switching points’ and ‘nodes’ better enable us to see places as at once unique and connected, and mediate between older idiographic and nomothetic approaches. As will be explained, these metaphors currently find favour among most human geographers writing about place. Despite definition three possibly implying that all places are of a similar area (e.g. 100 square kilometres), human geographers have never sought to offer an absolute measure of what distinguishes a place from, say, a region. This is because what constitutes a place is partly a function of changing technologies and infrastructures (e.g. roads, railways). In turn, these affect people’s perceptions of what is near or local, and what is far.

In its early years as a university subject, many geographers devoted some or all of their careers to studying one or more places. Typically, theirs was a holistic analysis that covered both human and physical geography and which presumed there to be unique or even singular characteristics that distinguished one place from another (see areal differentiation). With the post-1950 Quantitative Revolution in geography this sort of place analysis, also conducted at the regional scale, was largely eclipsed. Places began to be seen as instances of general processes because the new ontological presumption was that a certain spatial order was operative within and between otherwise different and distant localities. This presumption was also made by the early Marxist geographers, despite their concern to criticize spatial science. They were initially interested in the ‘laws of motion’ of capitalism that governed towns, cities, and rural landscapes worldwide. However, within a decade these new approaches to place came in for criticism. First, it was argued that place similarity is not synonymous with place sameness: only by abstracting too much from the specifics of places could general patterns be identified, so said many critics. For instance, in a particular twist on this argument, Edward Relph argued that the spread of homogenous, featureless modern architecture across Western cities was creating a damaging placelessness. Secondly, it was argued that the hermeneutic and affective dimensions of place experience were being ignored in the rush to privilege general theories and models. Humanistic geographers especially emphasized the second meaning of place, arguing that attention must be paid to how people value and interpret the places they inhabit, or have inhabited in the past. These valuations and interpretations, they argued, matter greatly to people and may vary considerably according to age, nationality, ethnicity, gender, and so on.   ...

Rogers, A., Castree, N., & Kitchin, R. (2013). "Place." In A Dictionary of Human Geography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 1 Feb. 2022

In the library's collections

  • place (philosophy)
  • place attachment
  • place AND geography
    This is a subject, keyword in the online catalog.
  • sense of place
  • cultural geography

Introductory reading(s)

  • Cover ArtExplorations in place attachment by Jeffrey S. Smith, ed.
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9780367887124
    The book explores the unique contribution that geographers make to the concept of place attachment, and related ideas of place identity and sense of place. ...
  • Cover artPlace: a short introduction by Tim Cresswell
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GF 50 .C74 2004
    ISBN: 9781405106726
    This text introduces students of human geography to the fundamental concept of place, marrying everyday uses of the term with the complex theoretical debates that have grown up around it.
  • Cover artPlace in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography by Tim Cresswell
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    Publication Date: 2nd ed.
    Some understanding of place is central to geography as a discipline. While it has many commonsense meanings, it is a contested and complicated concept within geography. This article starts by defining place in terms of location, locale, and sense of place. This is then developed through a consideration of the roles of materiality, meaning, and practice in the constitution of place. Following this, the article considers some key moments in the development of ideas about place. ...
  • Cover ArtThe Routledge handbook of place by Tim Edensor; Ares Kalandides; Uma Kothari, eds.
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9781138320499
    The handbook presents a compendium of the diverse and growing approaches to place from leading authors as well as less widely known scholars, providing a comprehensive yet cutting-edge overview of theories, concepts and creative engagements with place that resonate with contemporary concerns and debates. The volume moves away from purely western-based conceptions and discussions about place to include perspectives from across the world. ...
  • Cover ArtSpace, place and gender by Doreen Massey
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GF 95 .M37 1994
    ISBN: 9780816626175
    In these days of global acceleration on the one hand and intensifying local nationalisms on the other, how should we be thinking about space and place? This book brings together Doreen Massey's key writings on this debate. In it she argues that we have seen some problematical readings of both terms in recent years, and she proposes an alternative approach more adequate to the issues facing the social sciences today. Massey has organized these debates around the three themes of space, place, and gender. She traces the development of ideas about the social structure of space and place, and the relation of both to issues of gender and certain debates within feminism. ...

Selected book title(s)

  • Cover ArtA history of place in the digital age by Stuart Dunn
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry AZ 362 .D86 2019
    ISBN: 9781138223578
    A History of Place in the Digital Age explores the history and impact of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related digital mapping technologies in humanities research. Providing a historical and methodological discussion of place in the most important primary materials which make up the human record, including text and artifacts, the book explains how these materials frame, form and communicate location in the age of the internet. ...
  • Cover ArtHomelands: a geography of culture and place across America by Richard L. Nostrand; Lawrence E. Estaville, eds.
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9780801867002
    What does it mean to be from somewhere? If most people in the United States are from some place else what is an American homeland? In answering these questions, the contributors to this discussion offer a geographical vision of territory and the formation of discrete communities in the USA today. The text discusses groups such as the Yankees in New England, Old Order Amish in Ohio, African Americans in the plantation South, Navajos in the Southwest, Russians in California, and several other peoples and places. ...
  • Cover ArtMapping Woody Guthrie by Will Kaufman
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry ML 410 .G978 K37 2019
    ISBN: 9780806161785
    "I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' round," Woody Guthrie lamented in one of his most popular songs. A native of Oklahoma, he was still in his teens when he moved to Pampa, Texas, where he experienced the dust storms that would play such a crucial role in forming his identity and shaping his work. He later joined thousands of Americans who headed to California to escape the devastation of the Dust Bowl. There he entered the West Coast stronghold of the Popular Front, whose leftward influence on his thinking would continue after his move in 1940 to New York, where the American folk music renaissance began when Guthrie encountered Pete Seeger and Lead Belly. Guthrie kept moving throughout his life, making friends, soaking up influences, and writing about his experiences. Along the way, he produced more than 3,000 songs, as well as fiction, journalism, poetry, and visual art, that gave voice to the distressed and dispossessed. In this insightful book, Will Kaufman examines the artist's career through a unique perspective: the role of time and place in Guthrie's artistic evolution. ...
  • Cover artNot yet a placeless land: tracking an evolving American geography by Wilbur Zelinsky
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GF 503 .Z45 2011
    ISBN: 9781558498716
    Today it is taken as a given that the United States has undergone a nationwide process of homogenization - that a country once rich in geographic and cultural diversity has subsided into a placeless sameness. The American population, after all, spends much of its time shopping or eating in look-alike chain or franchise operations, driving along featureless highways built to government specifications, sitting in anonymous airports, and sleeping in forgettable motels. In this book, cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky challenges that nearly universal view and reaches a paradoxical conclusion: that American land and society are becoming more uniform and more diverse at the same time. ...
  • Cover ArtPostcolonial spaces: the politics of place in contemporary culture by Andrew Teverson; Sara Upstone, eds.
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PR 9080.5 .P72 2011
    ISBN: 9780230252257
    With essays from a range of geographies and bringing together influential scholars across a range of disciplines, this book focuses on the role of space in the study of the politics of contemporary postcolonial experience, engaging with the spectrum of postcolonial spatialities which play a significant role in defining global postcolonial culture. ...
  • Cover ArtWhy place matters: geography, identity, and civic life in modern America by Wilfred M. McClay; Ted V. McAllister, eds.
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9781594037160
    Contemporary American society, with its emphasis on mobility and economic progress, all too often loses sight of the importance of a sense of "place" and community. Appreciating place is essential for building the strong local communities that cultivate civic engagement, public leadership, and many of the other goods that contribute to a flourishing human life. Do we, in losing our places, lose the crucial basis for healthy and resilient individual identity, and for the cultivation of public virtues? ...

Finding scholarly articles and journals for Place

  • Resource logoAcademic search complete by EBSCO
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    A scholarly, interdisciplinary article index and a good starting place for article searching on any subject.
  • Resource logoThe web of science citation databases by ISI (Institute for Scientific Information)
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    The online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.

Keeping up with Geography journal literature

Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for all facets of Geography? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's, you can download and read the articles you want from the journals for which we have subscriptions.

You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's also available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.

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  • Last Updated: May 12, 2025 10:16 AM
  • URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/human_geography
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Subjects: Geography
Tags: border studies, boundaries, cultural geography, demography, detention, economic geography, feminist geography, gentrification, GEOG.02.01-fa24, geopolitics, migration studies, physical sciences, place, political geography, Social Sciences, tourism

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