新文化地理学的理论统一性与话题多样性

Theoretical unity and thematic diversity in new cultural geography

新文化地理学起源于20世纪80年代,是对传统文化地理学研究范式的激进反思甚至颠覆。首先,新文化地理学具有理论基础的统一性。其反对伯克利学派"超有机体"的文化观,认为"文化"并非具象的"物体",而是在特定的社会情景或社会关系之下由社会群体自下而上地建构或生产的。自然、景观、地方、空间等地理学要素也并非"文化"被动的表达或容器,而是建构意义与价值系统的关键维度。其次,新文化地理学具有研究话题的多样性。这种多样性不应该被简单理解为研究视角的分散性或破碎性,而是新文化地理学的文化观带来的必然结果。新文化地理学关注草根群体自下而上的文化实践、不同群体与不同尺度的文化事项、以及瞬息万变的日常生活经验。因此,这极大地拓展了其研究话题的广度。目前,中国地理学中有关文化的研究还处在比较边缘化的位置,但现代中国社会的高速变迁迫切地要求文化地理学者从文化的社会性与空间性出发,探讨社会成员赋予自然、景观、地方、空间等地理学要素的文化意义,以及文化这一维度在经济地理学、城市地理学等研究中的重要作用。

This paper presents an overview and scrutiny of what is termed the 'new cultural geography', which first emerged in the 1980 s and has acted as a radical rethinking and subversion of traditional approaches in cultural geography. This paper summarizes the fundamental rationales and orientations in new cultural geography from two perspectives. On the one hand, this study suggests that new cultural geography, as an established field of knowledge and research, does have a relatively unified theoretical foundation. Above all, new cultural geography rejects the idea of superorganism that undergirded the theoretical edifice in traditional cultural geography, especially the Berkeley School of landscape studies. It undermines the Sauerian view of culture as an ontological entity that determines ways of life from above. In contrast, new cultural geography conceptualizes culture as a social construction that emerges, in a bottom- up manner, from everyday life and social practices. It is contingent upon social contexts and the relations of production, and is radically unstable and dynamic.Culture, in this sense, provides a system of meanings and values that grassroots social actors inhabit and, in many circumstances, also contest. Meanwhile, geographical elements, such as nature, landscape, space and place, are not merely the passive expression or container of culture. Rather, they are inherently constitutive of cultural meanings, values, norms and ideologies. In other words, the formation of culture works through geography and spatiality as medium. On the other hand, this paper also stands for the diversity of research themes and topics. Such diversity should not be understood in terms of the risk of disciplinary fragmentation, but a necessary outcome of the reconceptualization of culture per se. Because culture is viewed as emerging from actual social practices and everyday life experiences, its study necessarily covers diverse aspects of social life. New cultural geography also places a focus on multiple social groups and scales, which further adds to its richness. This article calls for Chinese geographers' enhanced engagement with new cultural geography. Not only to grasp better understanding of the ways in which geography is constitutive of meanings and values, but also to know how the study of culture has broader implications for other subdisciplines in human geography, such as economic geography and urban geography.