Topophilia, Ethnocentrism, and a Tale of Four Cities

Abstract

I remember first reading Yi-Fu Tuan’s Topophilia as an undergraduate geography student at Stetson University in the late 1970s. Like many geography departments at small liberal arts colleges, there were only one or two faculty members teaching most of the courses. Bruce Bradford, the department chair and my advisor, was a classically trained Penn State geographer comfortable on both the physical and human sides of the discipline. Topophilia was among several books he assigned me to read as part of an independent study course in cultural geography. I remember finding some sections of the book to be very intriguing and others to be quite abstract. I certainly did not comprehend the underlying theme of the book (even though it is in the subtitle) until several years later when I read the book again as a graduate student.

Bradford also used Topophilia’s Chapter 4 (Ethnocentrism, Symmetry, and Space) in my introductory cartography course. I quickly and easily grasped the concept of ethnocentrism and found it fascinating how ethnocentrism was illustrated in mapping.