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Modern Europe: Place, Culture and Identity, B. GRAHAM (Ed), Edward Arnold, London (1998). xiii+322 pp. L15.99 (pbk). ISBN 0 340 67698 1.
This is an original book because it stresses the spatiality of Europe. By this I mean that if 'Europe' has an identity beyond as well as within the institutions that promote it (and the rather larger than cottage academic industry that feeds off them), this identity has to be found in the complex nature of place. Places are constellations of relations which both rub up together - far from always comfortably so - in curious ways within and across places which are shaped by this historical geography of the experiences of place. The book is original in its concern for `three interlocking themes'. These are identified by Brian Graham in his introduction, first chapter and epilogue as being concerned with how `complex cultural and economic trajectories derived from the past have produced the geographical diversity of our modern era, while ensuring that the meanings of Europe and its places have been continuously negotiated through time' (p. 311).
Well this is not quite so original and there are some curious omissions - including some previous efforts within geography to write this kind of Europe - in its impressive bibliographies. But the strength of this book is that these concerns are not merely repeated by the editor but are then followed up by the contributors and are reflected...