Key Thinkers on Space and Place Book

I would recommend this as a useful reference guide to have on your shelf if you teach about Space and Place or if you research on Space and Place. I would assign it in a graduate course on Space and Place and would consider it for an undergraduate course.

It has entries on 52 thinkers on Space and Place including Yi-Fu Tuan, Mike Davis, Edward Soja, and Raymond Williams. For each entry (written by different contributors), readeres are provided with "biographical details and theoretical context," "spatial contributions" and "key advances and controversies." There is also a list of major works and a secondary source bibliography. This is useful in reviewing the context for an author's work and placing him or her in a community of thinkers. I particularly appreciated that the authors of the entries connected the thinkers. For example, the entry on Homi Ki. Bhabba discusses the way Gillian Rose employs Bhabba's work.

None of the entries here would substitute for a reading of an article, essay, book or oeuvre. The focus here is assessing the contributions and context rather than providing summaries of the thinkers' main works.