Key Challenges in Geography

In this book, practitioners and students discover perspectives on landscape, place, heritage, memory, emotions and geopolitics intertwined in evolving citizenship and democratization debates. This volume shows how memorialization can contribute to wider inclusive interpretations of history, tourism and human rights promoted by the European Project. It's geographies of memories can foster cooperation as witnessed throughout Europe during the 2014-18 WWI commemorations. 
Due to new world orders, geopolitical reconfigurations and ideals that emerged after 1918, many countries ranging from the Baltic and Russia to the Balkans, Turkey and Greece, eastern and central Europe to Ireland are continuing with commemorations regarding their specific memories in the wider Europe. Shared memorial spaces can act in post conflict areas as sites of reconciliation; nonetheless `the peace' cannot be taken for granted with insecurities, globalization, and nationalisms in the USA and Russia; the UK's Brexit stress and populist movements in Western Europe, Visegrád and Balkan countries. Citizen-fatigue is reflected in socio-political malaise mirrored in France's Yellow Vest movement and elsewhere. Empathy with other peoples' places of memory can assist citizens learn from the past. Memory sites promoted by the EU, Council of Europe and UNESCO may tend to homogenize local memories; nevertheless, they act as vectors in memorialization, stimulating debate and re-evaluating narratives.
This textbook combines geographical, inter-cultural and inter-disciplinary approaches and perspectives on spaces of memory by a range of authors from different countries and traditions offers the reader diverse and holistic perspectives on cultural geography, dynamic geopolitics, globalization and citizenship.

“I don’t know if we have ever encountered a more globally and conceptually wide-ranging examination of the naming of land and sea than Gerry O’Reilly’s edited volume. Place Naming, Identities, and Geography will be important for anyone coming to terms with society’s ongoing “naming turn.” As part of this turn, academics, activists, policy-makers, and capitalists alike increasingly realize that toponyms are deeply connected to the human social and spatial condition and lie at the center of so many political changes, heritage campaigns, and development projects. O’Reilly and his contributors abandon the comfort of a traditional uniform interpretation of place naming to amplify the many, conflicting voices and experiences flowing through namescapes—highlighting the different ways people use and map toponyms as data, regulate and standardize them as navigation systems, connect and fight over them as cultural symbols, and fashion them into neoliberal place brands. No doubt, PlaceNaming, Identities, and Geography will soon become essential reading for emerging and established scholars in toponymy while also informing geographic thought more broadly.” (Derek H. Alderman, University of Tennessee, USA — Co-Editor, The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place)