Guest Editorial and Review: Cultural Geography and Cultural Policy KEVIN M. DUNN This is the first occasion on which Australian Geographical Studies has devoted most of an issue to the sub-discipline of cultural geography. Perhaps the numbers of cultural geographers in this part of the world could never before have justified such a collection. This is not to say that cultural geography has been absent from Australia, indeed the sub-discipline has had a continuing presence (Anderson and Jacobs, in this issue). Still, the 1990s have been exciting times for cultural geographers in Australia. Their sub-discipline has experienced a phase of growth and dynamism. Cultural geography sessions at recent IAG conferences have been well attended, and the number of paper sessions has grown (5 at IAG Monash in 1993; 5 at the remote IAG Magnetic Island in 1994; and 10 at IAG Newcastle in 1995). It is entirely appropriate that this issue of the new look Australian Geographical Studies should open with a selection of papers from this burgeoning sub-discipline of Australian geography. This issue provides one of the first forums for Australian cultural geographers to outline their directions and contributions to non- specialist colleagues. The following collection of papers can not however, be considered in any way exhaustive of the rich and varied corpus of Australian cultural geography. To get a proper sense of the scale and scope of Australian cultural geography requires an engagement with a range of existing and forthcoming texts (Anderson and Gale, 1992; Johnson, 1994a; Gibson and Watson, 1994; Stratford, forth- coming). The aim of this thematic issue is to demonstrate the critically reflexive, politically engaged and policy-relevant nature of work being carried out by cultural geographers in Australia. The papers raise important questions about a range of government policies, demonstrate some of the approaches used within cultural geography and grapple with issues surrounding its practise in Australia. This guest editorial also provides an opportunity to respond from an Australian perpsective to some recent concerns expressed about cultural geography in general. These include the claim that a ‘cultural turn’ within geography has seen a focus on esoteric issues to the neglect of more material and structural concerns. Critics have claimed that the language of cultural geography is inaccessible and perhaps undemocratic. Others have questioned whether many of the research interests of cultural geographers can rightly be claimed as geographical. Some of these criticisms may be reasonable but others emanate from a misunderstanding of some of the core concepts used in this sub-discipline, others still are expressions of resistance to the entrance into human geography of some of the insights developed in cognate disciplines. 1 Australian Geographical Studies • April 1997 • 35(1):1-11 Kevin Dunn is Lecturer in Geography at The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052.