Cultural Encounters with the Environment: Enduring and Evolving Geographic Themes. By Murphy, Alexander B. and Douglas L. Johnson, eds. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (2001). Reviewed by Michelle Rhodes

Four decades ago, Philip Wagner and Marvin Mikesell compiled Readings in Cultural Geography, arguably the founding text in modern cultural geography.In it, they outlined the primary subsets of the discipline, and defined as well the role geographers play in exploring relationships between cultures and their environments.ãFor [...] cultural geographers, any sign of human action in a landscape implies a culture, recalls a history, and demands an ecological interpretation•the history of any people evokes its setting in a landscape, its ecological problems, and its cultural concomitants; and the recognition of a culture calls for the discovery of traces it has left on the earthä (p.23).Mikesell himself explored many of these themes in his own work; his research interests ranged from exploring ecological relations in North Africa to presenting ideas on how we should conceptualize nationhood.His scholarship in the field, and in cultural ecology in particular, is the inspiration behind Cultural Encounters with the Environment.Alexander Murphy and Douglas Johnson have brought together fifteen of Mikesellâs colleagues and former students in this festschrift to the University of Chicago geographer.The result is a well-written, well-ordered addition to the recent array of literature in cultural geography.The contributors in this volume fuse the major themes emphasized in the 1962 compilation, such as cultural ecology, settlement and diffusion, and cultural adaptation, with discursive interpretation, place perception, and other contemporary approaches and perspectives.At the same time, they engage in what Chris Philo (2000) refers to as Îrematerializingâ, or rather, putting the Îfieldâ back into the field work of cultural geography.Murphy and Johnson divide the volume into three sections: Îconstructing cultural spacesâ, Îremaking the environmentâ, and Îclaiming spacesâ, a schematic that demonstrates the degree to which traditional themes have been reinterpreted.No one essay is easily classified within this breakdown, however, as each addresses the changing nature of how space and place are organized within cultural systems and in relation to the immediate environment.The subject matter is diverse, yet complementary, in both focus and approach.Chad Emmettâs paper on the division of religious spaces in Israel and Palestine illustrates how fragile is the peace attained among competing actors in contested spaces of worship.Segregation of worship spaces in some situations provides for a ãform of scattered sovereigntyä (p.279).Such sovereignty is begrudgingly ceded in the West Bank, the focus of Shaul Cohenâs essay on the Îabsence of placeâ among Palestinians.The scattered zones of varying authority in which Palestinians live, coupled with shifting social constructions of place through literature and nationalist sentiment, mean that place is a construct which is as much Îcircumscribed or dictatedâ (p.299) from above as from within.These constructions and meanings are derived from Israeli authorities and international conventions, rather than from a singular, internally driven, Palestinian self-image.Charles Good, James Wescoat, and Karl and Elizabeth Butzer, also present case studies on understanding cultural practices and adaptations of non-Western societies.Goodâs historical examination of western vs. nonwestern understandings of the traditional practice of female circumcision demonstrates the need to combine cultural with medical geographies, and for deconstructing the discourse surrounding those cultural practices seen as Reviews

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