Bookish cultural geographies

Since the first issue of Ecumene in 1994, book reviews (and, consequently, books and book reviewers) have played an important role in the journal. ¹ While other journals have discontinued their review sections, the editors of cultural geographies are committed to publishing short reviews, review essays and review forums on books we feel are important and of interest to the journal’s readership. In this short editorial, we outline some of the reasons why we think books and book reviews remain important for the field of cultural geography. Cultural geography remains, we argue, an inherently ‘bookish’ sub-discipline that recognises the importance of books as a medium of academic exchange.

It is fairly common to see commentaries on the decline of the monograph, the transformation of book publishing and the projected future role of the book and book review as media and sources of knowledge. ² On one hand, research monographs continue to assume a central place in humanities disciplines and in national academic contexts where books are required for tenure or promotion, or where successful doctoral candidates are expected to publish their theses as books. On the other hand, cultural geographers have built successful careers without publishing scholarly monographs or edited books ³ that can appear to be rather time-consuming and unwise publishing choices, especially when working under the gaze of natural science and physical science scholars for whom they seem to be rather exotic and labour-intensive outputs. In the face of multiple time pressures, journal articles can appear like a quick and easy option to disseminate ideas, not least because research monographs do take a long time to write. ⁴ Given these pressures, it is no surprise that the shorter peer-reviewed article in the highly ranked international journal now serves as the universal output type valued both by human and physical geographers. Commercial publishing houses are also increasingly making books, including research monographs, purchasable by the chapter, suggesting that they are little more than a compendium of articles to be engaged with in isolation. However, books provide the space for authors to be experimental, develop nuanced arguments, explore points in depth, connect ideas across chapters and experiment with new ways of writing. Many academics also gain pleasure from reading and writing books, carving out time from busy schedules to enjoy the intellectual stimulation they provide. Books also travel in ways that journals and journal articles do not, being read across disciplines and bringing cultural geographic ideas to scholars across the humanities and social sciences. ⁵ As such, they continue to have an important place in the publishing landscape and in the reading and writing practices of geographers.

Books are diverse and variable things, ranging from the short bite-sized book (e.g. Minnesota’s ‘Forerunners’ series, or the ‘Palgrave Pivot’) and textbook, to the full-length monograph and Handbook. In this digital age, some scholars also find the conventional book format constraining, experimenting with a range of publishable formats, including artist books and chapbooks/pamphlets. ⁶ The emphasis on creativity currently prevailing in cultural geography is contributing to this trend, with scholars feeling increasingly liberated to explore and develop their own creative capabilities. As academics seek to tell different stories in new ways, books by cultural geographers are being published outside of the more usual publishing houses and in more imaginative and popular scholarly forms. ⁷ Some publishers (e.g. Uniform Books, Cambridge Scholars Publishing) are beginning to specialise in image-heavy or creative writing formats. ⁸ It is also relatively easy to self-publish an electronic book – such as a kindle book via the retail giant Amazon – with digital media providing flexible formats and styles that can open up academic scholarship to new readerships. ⁹ Yet, while such proliferation in academic publishing formats is occurring, these formats often (though not always) remain smaller scale and can be harder to justify as ‘scholarly’ outputs. Books, then, can be embraced and read as more variable, flexible and humanistic media than the more rigid ‘scientific’ journal article, although humanities-leaning journals such as cultural geographies have worked hard to encourage authors to experiment with the style and format of submissions.

Cultural geographers may value and indeed write books, but cultural geography can appear to sit awkwardly between humanities disciplines where monographs are the primary medium of academic exchange, and the broader discipline of geography in which monograph production has arguably waned. In the United Kingdom, the research assessment panels for the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 and the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 lamented the relatively low and declining number of books being submitted for assessment by UK geographers, ¹⁰ although historical geography has been identified as one key area where books are still highly valued and are consistently produced by scholars. ¹¹ At a time when the number of new monographs by cultural geographers seems relatively low, cultural geography is arguably at a highpoint in its interdisciplinary reach. Cultural geographic research has gained increasing purchase in a range of cognate disciplines (including literary studies and performance studies), with publishers recognising this appetite. As editors, we are committed to publishing reviews not only of books that convey the best research by cultural geographers but also of the many other books that we feel speak to cultural geographic interests, agendas and audiences. This concern reflects – as Denis Cosgrove and James Duncan put it in issue one of Ecumene – an ‘attachment . . . to geographical knowledge and the geographical imagination rather than to the discipline of geography narrowly defined’. ¹²

At a time when the book retains an important place in the field of cultural geography, we feel that the book review also has an important role in the discipline and this journal. It is true that academic consumers can easily find new books and scan their contents using search engines, publisher websites and email updates, as well as through online stores such as Amazon. Academic file sharing websites and offshore publishing sites offer illicit downloads of many digital books, and some potential reviewers might ask why they would want to write a review for a free copy. Incisive reviews frequently appear in academic blogs, enabling reader–reviewers to provide a critical self-published overview that is less constrained by guidelines imposed by review editors and publishers. There are no doubt other reasons why individuals do not write book reviews, read book reviews or even read, write or buy books, but book reviews do still have an important role to play in the critical reading and reception of scholarly ideas. Book reviews provide an important opportunity for expert scholars to review ideas and arguments after publication, which is especially valuable when not all publishers send full book manuscripts out for peer review. ¹³ Once they have agreed to write a review, book reviewers also commit to reading and engaging with the whole book, something we might not otherwise have time or reason to do! Some reviewers have suggested to us that this is why they like writing reviews – they are forced to read a whole book and engage with its book-length argument.

Commissioning and publishing book reviews also has its challenges. In today’s commercially minded publishing world of download statistics and individually purchasable articles, publishers and journal editors are all too aware that book reviews tend to be accessed less and take up valuable and limited page space. Potential reviewers may also place their reviewing commitments lower down individual academic ‘to do’ lists, because book reviews are little valued by employing institutions, particularly in the United Kingdom. Other scholars agree to review books but never deliver them. Book reviews are, here, no different to a whole host of other academic projects which get commissioned but remain incomplete or unfulfilled. At cultural geographies, we always try and target the most appropriate reviewers for a book, keeping a balance between senior reviewers and early career reviewers. We have never resorted to the ‘first come, first served’ approach that some journals and review editors take, whereby they advertise lists of books on forums and issue books to the first responder. This does mean that we rely upon our personal knowledge, networks and Internet searches to find potential reviewers, so we always welcome enquiries from interested reviewers – particularly early career reviewers – who may wish to review for the journal.