Clothes are inherently geographical objects, yet few of us consider the social and economic significance of their journey from design to production to consumption. The Geographies of Fashion is the first in-depth study of fashion economies from a geographer's perspective, exploring the complex relationship between our attachment to the clothes we own, love and desire, and their geographic and economic ties. How far does a garment physically travel from factory to wardrobe? How do clothes come to have social or economic value and who or what creates it? What are the geographies of fashion and how do they interact with one another? This ground-breaking book powerfully reframes fashion spaces, from the body to the city, digital or virtual space to material production, positioning fashion at the centre of contemporary culture and collective identities. Combining contemporary theoretical approaches with a cutting-edge analysis of international fashion brands and institutions including Maison Martin Margiela, Zara, Louis Vuitton, ASOS and Savile Row, The Geographies of Fashion is essential reading for students of fashion, geography and related disciplines including sociology, architecture and design.

Taking cultural theorist Michel de Certeau's notion of 'the everyday' as a critical starting point, this book considers how fashion shapes and is shaped by everyday life. Looking historically for the imprint of fashion within everyday routines such as going to work or shopping, or in leisure activities like dancing, the book identifies the 'fashion system of the ordinary', in which clothing has a distinct role in the making of self and identity. Exploring the period from 1890 to 2010, the study is located in London and New York, cities that emerged as as socially, ethnically and culturally diverse, as well as increasingly fashionable. The book re-focuses fashion discourse away from well-trodden, power-laden dynamics, towards a re-evaluation of time, memory, and above all history, and their relationship to fashion and everyday life. The importance of place and space - and issues of gender, race and social class - provides the broader framework, revealing fashion as both routine and exceptional, and as an increasingly significant part of urban life. By focusing on key themes such as clothing the city, what is worn on the streets, the imagining and performing of multiple identities by dressing up and down, going out, and showing off, Fashion and Everyday Life makes a unique contribution to the literature of fashion studies, fashion history, cultural studies, and beyond.

Geographies of Media and Communication From the invention of the telegraph to the emergence of the Internet, communications technologies have transformed the ways that people and places relate to each other. Geographies of Media and Communication is the first textbook to treat all aspects of geography’s variegated encounter with communication. Connecting geographical ideas with communication theories such as intertextuality, audience-centered theory, and semiotics, Paul C. Adams explores media representations of places, the spatial diffusion of communication technologies, and the power of communication technologies to transform places, and to dictate who does and does not belong in them.

Military Geographies is about how local space, place, environment and landscape are shaped by military presence, and about how wider geographies are touched by militarism. A book about how local space, place, environment and landscape are shaped by military presence, and about how wider geographies are touched by militarism. Sets a new agenda for the study of military geography with its critical analysis of the ways in which military control over space is legitimized. Explores the ways in which militarism and military activities control development, the use of space and our understanding of place. Focuses on military lands, establishments and personnel in contemporary peacetime settings. Uses examples from Europe, North America and Australasia. Draws on original research into the mechanisms by which the British government manages the defence estate. Illustrated with maps, plans and other figures.

An overview of the research into consumer behaviour and the use of space, including the internet, identity, connections through commodity chains, commercial culture and morality.

This book explains how space, place and mobility have shaped the experiences of disabled people both in the past and in contemporary societies. The key features of this insightful study include: * a critical appraisal of theories of disability and a new disability model * case studies to explore how the transition to capitalism disadvantaged disabled people * an exploration of the Western city and the policies of community care and accessibility regulation. Brendan Gleeson presents an important contribution to the major policy debates on disability in Western societies and offers new considerations for the broader debates on embodiment and space within Geography.

Analyses the construction of socio-spatial boundaries seen in gedner, colour, sexuality, age, lifestyle and disability, arguing that powerful groups tend to dominate space to create fear of minorities in the home, community and state.

Food occupies a seemingly mundane position in all our lives, yet the ways we think about shopping, cooking and eating are actually intensely reflexive. The daily pick and mix of our eating habits is one way we experience spatial scale. From the relationship of our food intake to our body-shape, to the impact of our tastes upon global food-production regimes, we all read food consumption as a practice which impacts on our sense of place. Drawing on anthropological, sociological and cultural readings of food consumption, as well as empirical material on shopping, cooking, food technology and the food media, this book demonstrates the importance of space and place in identity formation. We all think place (and) identity through food - we are where we eat!

Exploring a wide range of issues, from the integration of the world economy to how contemporary processes are shaping and shaped by nation-states and how workers are organizing transnationally in response to transformations in the planet’s economic geography, Geographies of Globalization is a critical examination of what has become the leitmotif of our contemporary world. Challenges neoliberal assumptions on the nature of globalization Provides a conceptual overview of how globalization is a spatial process and of its relation to capitalism Explores whether we are in fact living in a more ‘globalized’ world or only in a more ‘internationalized’ one Considers arguments concerning whether ‘globalization’ is a new phenomenon or simply the latest manifestation of processes many hundreds of years in the making Focuses on how nation-states have shaped, and been shaped by, contemporary processes of ‘globalization’, how ‘globalization’ has been imagined discursively, and how workers are responding to such processes Explores how workers are creating new organizing strategies in response to ‘globalization’

To be in one's comfort zone is perceived to be conservative, and socially and culturally unadventurous. At the same time the embodied, material experience of 'comfort' is anticipated for satisfying experiences of everyday life. To comfort is to support and strengthen. Bringing together conceptual and empirical research that deploys the lens of comfort to make sense of the textures of everyday life in a variety of geographical contexts, this is the first volume to engage critically with 'comfort' and 'discomfort' as substantive concerns for Human Geography. Comfort and discomfort have come to the fore in a range of works examining the relations between place and emotion, the senses, affect and materiality. This emergence reflects in part, we argue, how questions of comfort intersect humanistic, cultural-political and materialist registers of understanding. Geographers, anthropologists, sociologists and historians have recognized 'comfort' as more than just an emotion through which we understand the world; rather, through its presence, absence and pursuit worlds are actively made and un-made. Advancing this recognition, in this volume we will engage seriously with 'comfort' as both an analytic approach and object of analysis. Geographers have begun to generate rich empirical materials on '(dis)comfort' and '(dis)comforting' experiences but, despite its colloquial prevalence as a term to understand our relationship to space and place, the disciplinary engagement with comfort remains largely under-theorized and in need of consolidation. Human Geography would benefit from a sustained commitment to defining, understanding and developing 'comforting geographies'; this book meets that need. Comfort and discomfort, we argue, provide a lens through which to develop new insights on central geographical themes, including embodied relationships to environments, encounters with difference, the material textures of place, and spaces of health an