SiGMA Cube

I bought this book as part of my “last minute geography scramble” (or in Chinese 抱佛脚) plan. Never really knew much about human geography, I find the book a nice guide to an entry level overview of the discipline. However, I also find that reading the book chapter by chapter without seeking the original texts very boring and discouraging.

Because David Harvey has three entries in the list of key texts mentioned in the book and Doreen Massey two, there are more contributors to the book than the authors of the “key texts” covered. But the editors have done a good job organising a series of chapters with their distinct writing styles and foci. First of all, the chapters were largely arranged in chronological order. As a result by reading the chapter titles alone you can get a sense of the development of the discipline from 1950s to recent years. Secondly, for the earlier decades this kind of organisation also reflects the general trend of thought during that time, such as the “quantitative revolution” in 1950s and 1960s, and the emergence of radical geography in 1980s. However, in later decades such common focus in geographers’ thinking becomes less obvious, reflecting the diversification of the discipline and its interweaving with other disciplines such as economics or sociology.

Each of the contributors has also managed to make their chapter as readable and informative as possible. They may have had a standardised template to remind them what should be included in each chapter, just like that outlined on the back cover. But each contributor surely put their own thoughts on the key text of their choice into their writing, and makes every chapter unique. Some of the contributors are becoming key thinkers themselves, and it would be interesting to examine how the key text informed or inspired them to pursue their own thinking on that particular topic.

To a large extent, the expectation you hold when you open the book determines how well you can appreciate it. On the one hand, as emphasised in the introduction, do not think that you can read the book in the place of those key texts. If you do so, you will feel like that you have some beautifully drawn maps to islands of treasures yet you have no vessel to reach there, and the maps only add to your frustration. On the other hand, these introductions are written by established geographers and they will try everything to make the point that geography is no longer a descriptive practice but a science with established theory system, so be prepared for academic style writing not any easier than that you can find in a mainstream human geography journal. That said, to make the most out of the book, the reader should try to seek the original key texts, and use this book as their guide. At that point, one should find the book helpful, interesting and valuable.