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Patterned Ground

Entanglements of Nature and Culture

Patterned Ground unravels the entangled relationships between nature and culture. Around 100 entries by leading names in new geography and related disciplines focus on various ‘objects’ in the landscape – from beaches to battlefields, bees to horses, police stations to post-offices, trees to tractors. Each piece, written by an expert in the field, explores the way in which we understand that object and its relationship to the world around it. This book is neither encyclopedia nor dictionary, but a knowledgeable and impassioned engagement with the world. In this sense, it chimes with earlier experiments in understanding the earth and its landscapes, whether these endeavors have been conducted within the sciences, the social sciences or the arts.

Patterned Ground backtracks from familiar and obvious ways of seeing patterns in the world, and discovers it anew. In this way, it opens up new possibilities for thinking about the relationships between ourselves, objects and the ground on which we walk.

Distribution by the University of Chicago Press only to customers in the USA and Canada. Customers elsewhere should visit the UK website of Reaktion Books.


350 pages | 6.15 x 9.25

Culture Studies


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Reviews

"Patterned Ground sets itself apart from this crowded genre by creating a landscape of essays that are at once familiar in their topics and yet also powerfully new by their juxtaposition with each other . . .  The themes of Patterned Ground are powerful in the ability both to tie together disparate essays and to challenge the reader to reassess preconceptions of process, landscape and materiality. There is a subtle and playful lyrical connectivity to the arrangement of the essays. . . Ultimately, Patterned Ground succeeds because both the editors and the authors have created a compilation of vignettes that interrupt the reader’s normal flow of experience and create renewed perceptions of place."

Jack Livingston | Cultural Geographies

"A successful balance between the informative, discursive and imaginative elements in an eclectic collection that respects the variety of its contributors’ voices.  . . . these essays have given more pleasure than I expected . . . time spent reading them will not have been wasted."

Martin Haggerty | Planning Perspectives

Table of Contents

PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
GUIDE FOR READERS
SECTION ONE: FLOW
Introduction
Pipes
Cities
Ecosystems
Rivers
Ridges
Cliffs
Scree
Drifts
Virtual Space
Post Offices
Drumlins
Glaciers
Climate
Lakes
Rivers
Meanders
Railways
Freeways
Fields
Trade
Colonies
Continents
Battlefields
Dust
Pollution
Climate
Lakes
Fire
God
Water
Oceans
Ice Sheets
Sun
Water
Pollutants
Trade
Airports
SECTION TWO: SITE
Introduction
Mountains
Fields
Fieldwork
Hospitals
Wilderness
Parks
Farms
Bogs
Humans
Islands
Beaches
Deserts
Floods
Dams
Churches
Villages
Home
Shelter
Tors
Caves
Zoos
Police Stations
Boundaries
Natural Resources
Central Places
States
Refuges
Enterprise Zones
Town Halls
Slums
Garden Cities
Towns
Ghost Towns
Cities
Suburbs
Farms
Floodplains
Hills
SECTION THREE: MATTER
Introduction
Bees
Pubs
Pigs

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