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This paper presents the 'Anthroposcenic' as a geographical contribution to debates around the Anthropocene, deploying the insights of cultural and historical geography to ask how thinking through landscape and time might shape understanding. The paper begins by elaborating on the term 'Anthroposcenic', foregrounding the ways in which landscape becomes emblematic of environmental transformation, and reflects further on geological wordplay in science and the humanities. The role of historical enquiry in addressing the times of the Anthropocene is considered, in terms of the dating of a proposed Anthropocene epoch, and the resonance of past geological debate. The possibilities of the Anthroposcenic are then demonstrated through studies of eroding coastal landscapes, drawing on contemporary and historical material from the English coast. Landscape here becomes emblematic of the Anthropocene, and shows how processes of environmental change are articulated through different geographical scales. Coastal studies also show past landscape achieving present resonance, and thereby how the Anthroposcenic may encompass historical material anticipatory of current debate. The paper reflects too on the ways in which questions of inheritance may frame Anthroposcenic enquiry. A specific Anthroposcene serves to open and close the paper.

In the Nature of Landscape presents regional cultural landscape as a new direction for research in cultural geography. * Represents the first cultural geographic study of the Norfolk Broads region of eastern England * Addresses regional cultural landscape through consideration of narratives of landscape origin, debates over human conduct, the animal and plant landscapes of the region, and visions of the ends of landscape through pollution and flood * Draws upon in-depth original research, spanning almost two decades of archival work, interviews, and field study * Covers a great diversity of topics, from popular culture to scientific research, folk song to holiday diaries, planning survey to pioneering photography, and ornithology to children's literature * Features a variety of illustrative material, including original photographs, paintings, photography, advertising imagery, scientific diagrams, maps, and souvenirs

Social sciences and the humanities can utilize the concept of the Anthropocene to add meaning to climate research.

This article examines coastal defence in East Norfolk between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. From 1802 until 1932 sea defence between Happisburgh and Winterton was the responsibility of the Commissioners of Sewers for the Eastern Hundreds of Norfolk, more commonly known as the Sea Breach Commission (SBC). This article explores the geographies of authority shaping sea defence, with the SBC a body whose relationship to the local and national state could be uneasy. The article outlines the SBC’s nineteenth-century roles and routines, and examines its relationship to outside expertise, including its early hiring of geologist William Smith. The article reviews challenges to the SBC’s authority following late nineteenth-century flood events, details its early twentieth-century routines, and examines disputes over development on the sandhills. The article details the SBC’s dealings with an emerging national ‘nature state’, around issues such as coastal erosion and land drainage, matters which led to the SBC’s demise following the 1930 Land Drainage Act. The article concludes by considering the SBC’s contemporary resonance in a time of challenges to the role of the nature state, and anxieties over coastal defence.

This paper reflects on Cosgrove and Jackson's (1987) Area paper 'New directions in cultural geography' (Area, 19, 95–101), discussing its place within British geography in the 1980s, the associated conferences organised through the Institute of British Geographers, the continuing resonance of its themes and the nature of a 'classic' paper. Historical analysis is combined with personal memory to consider the paper's role in generating a 'new' cultural geography.

The paper considers the writings of Mary Butts (1890-1937) to explore a geography of ghosts. After examining earlier geographical engagements with the spectral and magical, and outlining the terms of recent scholarly debate concerning spectrality, the paper introduces Butts' life and work, focussing on her ghostly writings in stories, novels, journals, autobiography and an essay on the supernatural in fiction. Butts' discussion of magic and place, and her accounts of the landscapes of Dorset and west Cornwall, demonstrate a version of spectral landscape conveying enchantment, secret meaning and a culturally select geography. The paper concludes by considering Butts in relation to current discussions of spectral geography.

What we consider “nature” is always historical and relational, shaped in contingent configurations of representational and social practices. In the early twentieth century, the English ecologist A.G. Tansley lamented the pervasive problem of international misunderstandings concerning the nature of “nature.” In order to create some consensus on the concepts and language of ecological plant geography, Tansley founded the International Phytogeographical Excursion, which brought together leading plant geographers and botanists from North America and Europe. The first IPE in August 1911 started with the Norfolk Broads. It was led by Marietta Pallis, Tansley's former student at Cambridge. This trip and the work of Pallis, neglected in other accounts of this early period of the history of ecology, influenced the relations between Tansley and important American ecologists H.C. Cowles and F.E. Clements. Understanding “place” as a network of relations, our regional focus shows how taking international dialogue, travel and interchange into account enriches understanding of ecological practice.

David Matless, School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK Email: David.Matless@Nottingham.ac.uk cultural geographies 19(1) 123129 The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1474474010394505 cgj.sagepub.com A regional conversation David Matless Mike Pearson 124 cultural geographies 19(1) MP 1] In 1992, I created a solo performance entitled From Memory: an account of the death of my father, for a small audience in the restored, circular cockpit at the then Welsh Folk Museum in Cardiff. Geography has its own historical texts for scrutiny here, the discipline a part of the regional story alongside the narratives of natural science, folklore, tourism. [...]The Norfolk We Live In, a school geography book from 1958, shows the historic narratives of the county shaping geographic understanding of the time, surveys the industry and agriculture then current, and carries a certain texture of explanation, with graphs, maps and technical drawings offering a diagrammatic vision of life, in the Norfolk I would be born into. Works whose title or author would not catch attention in an online search, take the eye. [...]I might never otherwise have found Hester Burtons 1960 The Great Gale, a childrens story of the 1953 east coast floods, set in a thinly disguised Broadland, and something to set alongside newspaper reports and coastal geomorphological analyses of the disaster. DM 10] The Norwich Castle Museum has been a centre for natural history research on Broadland, displaying regional natural history dioramas of the region, and holding stuffed specimens from the county and the world.

Otter hunting was a minor field sport in Britain but in the early years of the twentieth century a lively campaign to ban it was orchestrated by several individuals and anti-hunting societies. The sport became increasingly popular in the late nineteenth century and the Edwardian period. This paper examines the arguments and methods used in different anti-otter hunting campaigns 1900–1939 by organisations such as the Humanitarian League, the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports and the National Association for the Abolition of Cruel Sports.

Otter hunting was a minor field sport in Britain but in the early years of the twentieth century a lively campaign to ban it was orchestrated by several individuals and anti-hunting societies. The sport became increasingly popular in the late nineteenth century and the Edwardian period. This paper examines the arguments and methods used in different anti-otter hunting campaigns 19001939 by organisations such as the Humanitarian League, the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports and the National Association for the Abolition of Cruel Sports. OA