Philippe Forêt, Andreas Kaplony (eds.): The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · asia, buddhism, cartography, china, geography, islam, mapping, middle east, silk road
“This book covers new ground on the diffusion and transmission of geographical knowledge that occurred at critical junctures in the long history of the Silk Road.
Much of twentieth-century scholarship on the Silk Road examined the ancient archaeological objects and medieval historical records found within each cultural area, while the consequences of long-distance interaction across Eurasia remained poorly studied. Here ample attention is given to the journeys that notions and objects undertook to transmit spatial values to other civilizations. In retracing the steps of four major circuits right across the many civilizations that shared the Silk Road, The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road traces the ways in which maps and images surmounted spatial, historical and cultural divisions.”
Publisher BRILL, 2008
Volume 21 of Brill’s Inner Asian library
ISBN 9004171657, 9789004171657
243 pages
review (Ron Sela, Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology)
review (Liano Cai, International Journal of Middle East Studies)
Henri Lefebvre: State, Space, World: Selected Essays (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · capitalism, geography, globalisation, history, neoliberalism, philosophy, political theory, politics, sociology, space, state
“One of the most influential Marxist theorists of the twentieth century, Henri Lefebvre pioneered the study of the modern state in an age of accelerating global economic integration and fragmentation. Shortly after the 1974 publication of his landmark book The Production of Space, Lefebvre embarked on one of the most ambitious projects of his career: a consideration of the history and geographies of the modern state through a monumental study that linked several disciplines, including political science, sociology, geography, and history.
State, Space, World collects a series of Lefebvre’s key writings on the state from this period. Making available in English for the first time the as-yet-unexplored political aspect of Lefebvre’s work, it contains essays on philosophy, political theory, state formation, spatial planning, and globalization, as well as provocative reflections on the possibilities and limits of grassroots democracy under advanced capitalism.
State, Space, World is an essential complement to The Production of Space, The Urban Revolution, and The Critique of Everyday Life. Lefebvre’s original and prescient analyses that emerge in this volume are urgently relevant to contemporary debates on globalization and neoliberal capitalism.”
Edited by Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden
Translated by Gerald Moore, Neil Brenner, and Stuart Elden
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2009
ISBN 081665316X, 9780816653164
330 pages
PDF, PDF (updated on 2020-7-31)
Comments (2)Franco Moretti: Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models For A Literary History (2005)
Filed under book | Tags: · geography, history of literature, literary criticism, literary theory, literature, reading
The “great iconoclast of literary criticism” reinvents the study of the novel.
In this groundbreaking book, Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. In place of the traditionally selective literary canon of a few hundred texts, Moretti offers charts, maps and time lines, developing the idea of “distant reading” into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, in which the canon disappears into the larger literary system. Charting entire genres—the epistolary, the gothic, and the historical novel—as well as the literary output of countries such as Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria, he shows how literary history looks significantly different from what is commonly supposed and how the concept of aesthetic form can be radically redefined.
Afterword by Alberto Piazza
Publisher Verso, 2005
ISBN 1844670260, 9781844670260
119 pages
a series of short essays and comments on the book (The Valve)
review (Elif Batuman, n+1)
review (Kathryn Schulz, The New York Times Sunday Book Review)