Reflections on "doing" cultural geography – "being" a cultural geographer in the Netherlands B. van Hoven Department of Cultural Geography, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands
Received: 21 Jul 2010 – Published in Soc. Geogr. Discuss.: 12 Aug 2010 Revised: 20 Jan 2011 – Accepted: 22 Feb 2011 – Published: 22 Mar 2011
Abstract. In this article, I explore Dutch social geography in the context of "the
cultural turn". In so doing, I extensively draw on writing from the
Anglo-American context which somewhat complicates the matter. Barnett (1998)
implied that the "cultural turn" is not a "coherent and singular process"
(379) which will emerge from my reflections as well. But even though the
disciplines have undergone different ways of becoming, Dutch geographies
are, formally, valued and assessed by procedures that have developed
alongside, if not as a part of, the cultural turn(s) in the United Kingdom.
In the Netherlands, different Departments have been a part of (or apart
from) the cultural turn in different ways. In this article, I draw on some
of the similarities and differences but will focus to a large extent on my
own institutional context at the University of Groningen.
Citation: van Hoven, B.: Reflections on "doing" cultural geography – "being" a cultural geographer in the Netherlands, Soc. Geogr., 6, 29-37, doi:10.5194/sg-6-29-2011, 2011.