Cultural geography and enchantment: the affirmative constitution of geographical research

Being surprised and surprising ourselves: A geography of personal and social change

“…They constitute occasions for experiencing emotions, and thus experiencing what it means to be human, and to be alive. They help enchant or re-enchant our world, by reigniting our appetite for it (Bennett, 2001; Geoghegan and Woodyer, 2014; Merrifield, 2011). The problem with appetite comes from the fact that it is far easier to learn how to satisfy it than to create or renew occasions for it.…”

Non-representational news: An intervention into pseudo-events

“…Originating in cultural geography (e.g. Dewsbury, 2010; Geoghegan and Woodyer, 2014; Lorimer, 2008; Thrift, 2008), applied in education (e.g. Fendler, 2016; Zembylas, 2016), and recently introduced in journalism and science communication (Parks, 2017), NRT incorporates elements of the performing arts and a variety of post-structural and post-modern ontologies and epistemologies (Vannini, 2015) to pay close attention to the pantheon of influences occurring right now that affect and make possible what will happen next.…”

“…It is an antidote to the cynical manipulations that underlie public affairs. Geoghegan and Woodyer (2014: 219), following Thrift (2008) in writing against ‘disenchantment’ in scholarly research, ask, ‘How can we embrace and nurture a child-like enthusiasm for the world, and how can we encourage others within and beyond our sub-disciplinary audiences to turn up the color and tune in?’ They answer that ‘we need to challenge the extant habits of critical thinking’ which ‘aim to negate the possibility of surprise’ (p. 224). Rather than being taken in by pseudo-events and propaganda, or unreflexively imbuing them with irresistible manipulative powers, NRT offers tools to usurp them with vividness and wide-eyed attention that takes into account much broader inputs and influences than are traditionally considered politically relevant in newsgathering.…”

On comfort and the culture of cultural geography

“…Over a post‐seminar beer, we decided to convene two sessions at the 2007 RGS‐IBG Annual Conference on ‘Enchanting Geographies’. Little did either of us imagine that this would lead us to a paper in Progress in Human Geography where we would define enchantment as ‘an open, ready‐to‐be‐surprised “disposition” before, in, with the world’, launching our cultural geography ‘manifesto’ for ‘a less repressed, more cheerful way of engaging with the geographies of the world’ (Woodyer and Geoghegan , 196; Geoghegan and Woodyer ). A paper that has gone on to offer a bridge between human and physical geography (see Brierley et al .…”