Picturing Land and LifeAuthor(s): Stephen DanielsSource: Area, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Jun., 1994), pp. 193-194Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20003431 .

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IBG Annual Conference 193

the effective teaching of large numbers of students and a healthy sharing of resources. Above all students responded positively about the experience, citing both pedagogical benefits and learning gains. The afternoon modules were skilfully chaired by Roy Haines-Young (Nottingham), for whom special thanks is extended for stepping-in at the last moment, and Serwan Baban (Coventry). The conveners would like to thank all the participants for

making the whole day an innovative, thought-provoking and a thoroughly pleasurable experience.

Hugh Matthews Nene College

Allan Jones

Plymouth

Picturing land and life This day long session, convened by Stephen James (Nottingham) and James Ryan (Royal Holloway, London) for the Historical and Social and Cultural Geography Study Groups, addressed the conference theme of ' Imaging the Environment' from a historical and cultural perspective. Twelve speakers, including four cultural historians, examined the power of visual images of land and life in a variety of settings in a number of media. Having, in the official conference route, passed through the ' Troubled Spaces ' session on gender and sexuality, a large and loyal audience reached a session which confirmed the study of cultural imagery as an expanding and highly fertile field of current human geography.

In a module on photography IBG Guest Lance Howard (UCLA) pointed out that the term geography means picturing as well as writing about the earth. This century, photographs are integral to the meanings of geographical texts, if their role has hitherto been little examined especially in relation to writing. He examined this issue in relation to some texts on post-modernity in general and Los Angeles in particular. Charles Withers (Cheltenham and Gloucester College) and SCSG guest John Taylor (Manchester Metro politan) focused on the role of nineteenth century photographers in constructing rural geographies, respectively in the Scottish Highlands and Norfolk Broads. In contrasting

modes of highland and lowland picturesque, George Washington Wilson and P H Emerson portrayed these places as tasteful landscapes, not vulgar playgrounds, if Emerson, as he confided in his journal, was highly susceptible to the allure of East End female strippers. In the following module on rural visions, David Matless (Oxford) took this subject into the twentieth century and the texts of professional geographers and planners, considering how particular visions of Broadland imply particular standards of bodily conduct. Moving to mid-Victorian paintings of the harvest scenes in the Home Counties, Tim Barringer (Victoria and Albert Museum) examined ideologies of discipline and leisure inscribed in the figures of the labourers, and how these contributed to the redefinition of ' nature '. The labours of the artist were also an issue in an age when the pictorial yield of a harvest field, the painting in the sale-room, could command a much higher price than the grain. Susanne Seymour (Nottingham) explored the material power of pictorial imagery in her study of a landed estate in Georgian Herefordshire and its Caribbean outlier. Using a variety of archival sources she showed how economic and social management were articulated by picturesque aesthetics. In a paper on rural Australia between the wars Roy Jones (Curtin), used statistical data and oral histories to bring out the progressive iconography in cartoons and illustrations. The role of exhibition display in defining national identity was examined in two papers. Steve Mills (Keele) charted the narrative organisation of open air museums in Virginia, including one which portrayed a single day in pioneer history. Deborah Sugg (East London) focused on tableaux from early twentieth century Daily Mail Ideal Home exhibitions to see how an enlightened Englishness-at once rustic and modern-was defined in contrast to the homes, lands and lives of exotically ' other' nations (both now appear equally bizarre).

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194 IBG Annual Conference

In the final module Peter Bishop (South Australia) looked at the poetics of moistness and national identity in paintings and pastiches of that most English and watery of artists, Constable. Had the dessication of much of southern England, and the issue of global warming, giving Constable's vision a contemporary poignancy? The incessant rain during the day, and the flooding of southern England, made us wonder. It was sufficient to make

HGRG guest Roy Porter's rail journey from London a six hour branch-line ramble around the sodden scenery of the East Midlands. He arrived in time to give a compelling paper on

Hogarth's portrayal of London. Hogarth's pictures were vested in the conventions of theatre, in its scenery, spectacle, scripts and performances, and so, appropriately was

Porter's lecture. Discussant Felix Driver (Royal Holloway) offered fresh perspectives on the day's proceedings, focussing particularly on the theory and history of the visual. By now participants had found an exit to circumvent the ' Troubled Spaces ' session, only to discover in discussions afterwards that the issues of knowledge and power there were closely related to those of the session they had attended. Cultural geography's constituency was a large and lively one at the conference as a whole.

Stephen Daniels University of Nottingham

Maps, meaning and action It was one of those mornings when, as so often at IBG meetings there were three of four sessions which everybody speaking would have liked to be at and so it was not surprising that the session on Maps, Meaning and Action changed considerably in character during the

morning as people came and went. The morning started with a decided essence of the 'new cartography' when Jeremy

Crampton (George Mason University) talked about contested mapping. He developed two examples of the contest, that over what cartography is and that over who cartography serves. He illustrated some of his points by reference to the argument over the ' Peters ' projection: at the very mention of which a sharp indrawing of breath was heard from some cartographic purists in the audience. He showed how Peters, despite almost universal rejection from cartographers had been very successful since his projection was an ideological device; however no cartography could be free from such aspects. David Pinder (Southampton) followed, developing the argument that maps are not mirrors of reality but are rather a discourse influenced by power. He suggested that maps could be used to present different visions and thus break up the totalising representation of the environment. To illustrate this he looked at the work of Benjamin in the late 1920s in Moscow and to the work of the Situationist International whose maps consisted of broken fragments carefully juxtaposed. Pam Shurmer-Smith (Portsmouth) concluded the first part of the morning and served to challenge further the views of conventional cartography by suggesting that maps are only of use if you know where you are-but many places were nowhere. From this she developed the idea of the liminal: formless, normless and boundless an existence of pure sensation. Although people normally sought to avoid the liminal and to impose order and structure, the ' sacred state of nothing between two somethings ' was creative rather than restrictive and had to be recognised of core importance in understanding.

Following coffee, Peter Collier divided the argument about cartography into four interests: the professional cartographer; the academic cartographer; the critics of cartography and

what he termed ' the cartography of self-indulgence '. He argued that much of the academic commentary on professional work was based on a complete misunderstanding both of the constraints of practice and the purposes of production. The lack of control over the individual map gave the view to suggestions of cartographic conspiracy. Peter Vujakovic rounded off the morning by looking at the way in which the myths of the new Europe as an island of stability were expressed in maps by the use of recurrent signifiers and referent systems.

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