Cultural geography and consumption

Abstract

The paper advances a review of cultural geography as well as a discussion of recent theoretical and methodological developments. The integration of cultural studies and social theory attests to the widening of topics in the "New Cultural Geography," and also to the increasing interaction of geography and the social sciences. A discussion is made concerning difference and coincidence between the classical cultural geography school and the new one. Along these lines of thought an examination of consumption as an important phenomenon of contemporary society is attempted, in terms of its relationships with daily life, cities, consumer culture, and places. The development of consumer geography as a new special interest of contemporary cultural geography is emphasized, along with an examination of the main research avenues of the phenomenon and the theoretical approaches taken for its analysis and evaluation. The paper also brings to the fore a few results and findings of research conducted by the author on patterns of consumption in Montería, a middle-sized city of the Colombian Caribbean, noting the importance of the study in the context of similar Latin American cities, in the light of dynamic urban growth and the global trends of socioeconomic development.