Cultural and Physical Expositions: Geographic Studies in the Southern United States and Latin America (review)

This is a nice volume, but I should admit from the outset that I am biased. As a former graduate student in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University, I know the authors in this book (some very well) as well as the traditions of the department that it celebrates. I am, in fact, a product of those traditions. That noted, I make no sales pitch here.

Recently, publications have appeared offering historical overviews of North American geography in various departments and regions (e.g., Wheeler and Brunn 2004; Shelley 1997). This volume can perhaps in some ways be seen as part of this trend. It is, however, much more than that. The 1998 meeting of the Southwest Division of the AAG was held at LSU in Baton Rouge, corresponding with the department's 70^th anniversary. A group of sessions was organized at that meeting to offer a celebration and historical overview of the contributions the LSU department has made to the discipline. This volume is a result of those sessions. Its publication as part of the department's own respected series, Geoscience and Man, is perfectly appropriate for what it offers.

LSU geography has long been a strong contributor to the discipline. Its departmental pairing with anthropology has served to make this contribution substantial and, in many ways, unique. Tracing its roots in part to the Berkeley tradition in geography, the department has been a consistent and strong component of geography in America. In particular, the department has contributed a great deal to the study of human-environment relationships.

This book offers both historical overviews and examples of different research traditions in the LSU department. A potential problem, to my mind, is that this established and still-vibrant department has produced a body of work and generations of scholars so diverse that this volume may not be seen as representative. Perhaps, then, it should be seen as a sampling. As its title hints, the book is organized around the cultural-physical dichotomy that has generally characterized the discipline of geography. The first section – Cultural Geography – has a heavy emphasis on Latin America, while the second – Physical Geography – focuses primarily on the Gulf Coast South. These subdisciplinary regional foci generally mirror those of the department.

The first section begins with a historical overview of a significant portion of LSU cultural geography, Latin Americanist geography, with appropriate nods to its primary founder, R.C. West. This chapter by Kent Mathewson also provides an extensive bibliography on Latin Americanist geographical research. Following this are ten examples of LSU geography and a diversity of subject matter including work by Brown on folk housing in Mexico, Perramond on political ecology in Mexico, Brady on indigenous land use in Honduras, Samson on ethnogeography in Honduras, Bonta on conservation in Honduras, Rainey on folk soil knowledge in Guatemala, Steinberg on cultural ecology in Belize, Herlihy on ethnogeography and mapmaking in Latin America, Richardson on landscape experience in Latin America and the U.S. South, and Heppen on racial politics in Louisiana. As is evident, eight of the ten studies focus on Latin America, one (Heppen) considers Louisiana, and one (Richardson) straddles the two culture regions. Characteristically insightful, this last chapter also blurs the boundary between geography and anthropology. If there is a common theme to this group of studies, it would be human-environment relationships and the tradition of field research that has long characterized the department. Evident throughout these chapters is the well-developed practice of interacting with and learning from people in the places where they live.

The second section is slightly different from the first. Again, the section begins with historical overview, but in this section Physical Geography (Walker), Climatology (Muller), and Biogeography (Liu) are considered. The case study portion of this section provides...