Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the latent legacy of cultural theory in geography. While anthropology made culture central to its work, geography approached the concept obliquely. The paper excavates geography's unique approach, illustrates its distinctiveness and points to future directions.

Paper long abstract:

The discipline of geography has always had an ambivalent relationship to the culture concept. While cultural geography had an immense influence on the methods and direction of the discipline more broadly, the question of culture itself (what is it, how it functions, its operative mechanisms and its underlying engine) has rarely been addressed explicitly. The aim of this paper is to excavate a latent geographical approach to the question of culture; a tradition that while sharing many touch points with anthropology, is nonetheless distinct even as it is less obvious. Specifically, I argue that the culture question has been developed by two schools of geographical thought: an Anthropogeographical School (represented by the traditions of Ratzel and Vidal de la Blache) and a Landscape School (represented by the Berkeley School and new cultural geographers). My purpose for conducting this excavation is not only to illustrate the discipline's distinct approach to the question of culture, but to make the argument that this tradition holds potential resources for raising the question of culture anew.