Attention to the idea of place has grown steadily since the 1980s in the context of an increased focus upon physical localities and new ways of organizing knowledge. These developments have been in part a response to the forces of globalization. The world has become an economic and cultural commons: Companies such as Wal-Mart and Starbucks have extended their reach worldwide, as have Hollywood films, which now earn the majority of their revenues overseas. Moreover, modern science, technology, and economics have not just homogenized space; in many respects they have annihilated it. Air travel has become ubiquitous, and both information and human identity now mutate within the hyperreal environment of cyberspace. As a result, there is a growing feeling that people inhabit a "Geography of Nowhere" (Kunstler 1993) not only in the sense of the homogeneity of shopping malls and suburban tract homes but also in terms of the...