New Worlds, New Geographies (Space, Place and Society) - Hardcover

Short, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0815605277 ISBN 13: 9780815605270

Publisher: Syracuse University Press, 1998

Synopsis

John Rennie Short maintains that the "new world order" is neither new nor orderly. His book, New Worlds, New Geographies, connects global change, urban transformation, and scholarly integrity. Short insists that it is the responsibility of academics to help make order out of the chaos of postmodernity and make sense of the relationships between people and the environment, the social and the spatial, the structural and the personal. From the restructuring of a "new world order" to the reappraisal of the role of academics, this accessible collection of essays calls for a "progressive human geography" to help cope with the political changes of a postmodern age. New Worlds, New Geographies represents a reluctant postmodernist and resident alien's attempt to make sense of a changing world.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

A puzzle, but an interesting one. First, the good news. Short (Geography/Syracuse Univ.), a self-described ``reluctant post-modernist,'' doesnt write the impenetrable, jargon-laden prose often embraced by postmodern authors. Unfortunately, the bad news is that ,despite its linguistic clarity, it is not clear what the book is about or why it was written. This volume combines autobiography initially with political geography, then the sociology of academia, and finally an alphabetic introduction to postmodernism. Anyone who has just returned from an extended visit to another planet will find the survey of major geopolitical developments in the first section quite useful; otherwise, it's pretty familiar territory. The brief sojourn inside the walls of the academy certainly ring true and will amuse those lacking first-hand experience of the petty battles among what Short terms academics, scholars, and intellectuals, but the reason for its presence in this book is a mystery. The most fun is to be had in the final section, where Short plays the role of postmodernist on postmodernism. Only the seemingly meaningless order of the alphabet is imposed herein, and from ``AIDS'' to ``zapper'' (as in the TV remote-control device) we are confronted with brief discussions of words that even in their selection reflect the conscious ambiguity of postmodernism. When ``deconstructionism'' is under the microscope, postmodernism is a school of thought, but the discussion of ``baldness'' implies that it is something you are in a very different way. Considering ``enlightenment'' casts postmodernity as a historical age following modernity, but somehow ``Japan'' manages to be a modern country in a postmodern world. Perhaps looking up ``author'' is the key to this puzzle, for we discover there that ``in the postmodernist world, the author has been declared dead. Long live the creative reader.'' Readers may find it more satisfying to spend time writing their own story than reading this one. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0815605277
• ISBN 13: 9780815605270
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 244