Böcker av Tim Edensor

Presents industrial ruins and explains what they can tell about ourselves and our past. It is their fragmentary nature and lack of fixed meaning that render ruins meaningful. This book highlights the danger of eradicating such urban sites through policies that privilege homogeneous new developments.

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. It includes an introductory chapter, which outlines key definitions, draws out influential historical and contemporary approaches to the theorisation of place and sketches out the structure of the book, explaining the logic of the seven clearly themed sections. Each section begins with a short introductory essay that provides identifying key ideas and contextualises the essays that follow. The original and distinctive contributions from both new and leading authorities from across the discipline provide a wide, rich and comprehensive collection that chimes with current critical thinking in geography. The book captures the dynamism and multiplicity of current geographical thinking about place by including both state-of-the-art, in-depth, critical overviews of theoretical approaches to place and new explorations and cases that chart a framework for future research. It charts the multiple ways in which place might be conceived, situated and practised. This unique, comprehensive and rich collection will be an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate teaching, for experienced academics across a wide range of disciplines and for policymakers and place-marketers. It will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines, such as Geography, Sociology and Politics, and interdisciplinary fields such as Urban Studies, Environmental Studies and Planning.

This book focuses on a single artefact, the Barochan Cross, a ninth century stone sculpture in Renfrewshire, Scotland. Exploring the changing stories, meanings, locations, uses and feelings of the sculpture, Tim Edensor adopts a broad temporal frame across twelve centuries that moves away from a periodisation that solely considers its original meanings and uses. Narrating the shifting ways in which the Barochan Cross has been moved, utilised, cared for, interpreted, encountered, sensed, copied and appropriated allows for a sophisticated yet highly accessible discussion about its changing relationships with the physical and conceptual landscapes in which it has been situated. This book thus expands the ways in which landscape might be conceptualised, revealing how artefacts can inform future critical thinking about heritage and bringing an important contribution to theories about material culture and landscape.

In undertaking a systematic analysis of urban materiality, this book investigates one kind of material in Melbourne: stone. In appealing to the general reader, academics and students, this book provides a highly readable account, replete with evocative examples and fascinating historical and contemporary stories about stone in Melbourne.

How does national identity vary across time and space, how is it contested, and what has been the impact of globalization upon national identity and culture? Attempting to answer such questions, this book examines how national identity is represented, performed, spatialized and materialized through popular culture and in everyday life.

A fascinating and unprecedented look at how illumination and darkness shape our experiences across history and space

This book presents for the first time a sociological analysis of the cultural phenomenon, the Taj Mahal. It describes many of the tourist practices around the Taj as well as considering the notion of tourism in a wider context.