This review is a collective endeavour emerging from a graduate seminar in economic geography. In an effort to express multiple readings and views of the book, we recorded a discussion organized around the listed subheadings of Capital Culture. We then condensed that discussion into its present form. Trevor Right, we are here to discuss Linda McDowell’s book which we’ve been reading along with Gibson-Graham’s The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) and Schoenberger’s The Cultural Crisis of the Firm as part of our seminar on the cultural turn in economic geography. As you know, McDowell’s book is an ethnographic case study based upon in-depth interviews with merchant bankers in the City of London following the ‘big bang’ of 1986, and focusing especially on issues of gender equity, politics, and identity. Methodology Jamie Let’s start by talking about her methodology. Andrew Although in her ‘Appendix’, she goes through her methodology, there is a perception that she wasn’t clear enough about whether she was prompting interviewees when the conversation stilted or how she set up the interviews in the first place. So placing this information in an ‘Appendix’ made it unclear up front as to what was informing her critique. Trevor She is not always clear in the text itself whether the material was from interviews or from other sources. There seemed to be an elision occurring sometimes. Graham Yes, she claims, for example, that common ways of referring to work in the city are ‘‘lifting your skirts’’ and other such phrases. But we don’t know quite how she got that information, whether from observation of the trading floor or from the inter- views. I thought, however, she wasn’t cagey about her research process. It was quite transparent. She did constantly refer to the dangers of generalizing from her interviews and statistics. Jamie She was clearly aware of the dangers of generalization but, nonetheless, pre- sented various quotes from interviewees as ‘‘representative’’. How do you juxtapose her attention to those ‘‘dangers of generalization’’against her use of ‘representative’quotes? Andrew Well, that boils down to trust, doesn’t it? We have to assume that this was a common theme amongst many interviews. If we don’t buy that trust, then what are we doing reading the book? Capital Culture : a review essay À Trevor Barnes, Graham Horner, Andrew Murphy, Xiaomin Pang, Richard Powell, Geoff Rempel, Kathrine Richardson, Alex Vasudevan, Jamie Winders Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall,Vancouver BC V6T 1Z2, Canada; e-mail: winders@interchange.ubc.ca Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2000, volume 18, pages 275 ^ 278 À A review of Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City by L McDowell; Blackwell, Oxford, 1997, 240 pages, »50.00 cloth, »15.99 paper (US $62.95, $26.95) ISBN 0-631-20530-6, 0-631-20531-4 DOI:10.1068/d330