Naive geography: geoconceptology and topology of geomental maps

Abstract

The article presents the study of the geospace mental representations and their variability depending on the regional point of view. The research material comprises about 500 naive maps of Russia, created by informants of seven Russian regions: Moscow, St. Petersburg (capitals), Siberia (Barnaul, Biysk), Southern, Mid- and Northern Ural (Orenburg, Ufa, Perm) and Kaliningrad. A geoconcept, as a set of collective ideas about a geographic object, synthesizes images of a geographic location (topos), its name (toponym), ideas about it and its spatial parameters (length, coordinates, location relative to other geolocations). The paper raises the problem of the topology of the mental space, and describes the method and results of constructing computable metric models of geomental spaces. The use of modern means of processing and analyzing naive maps allowed to detect spatial dependencies between geoconcepts, their probable localization zones, and position relative to each other on the geomental map space. Modeling of geoconcepts was carried out on the example of the analysis of the collective regional representations associated with the capital (Moscow). Noticeable differences were found in the regional geoconcepts of Moscow, which makes it relevant to conduct research on the regional variability of the geoconcept systems of the country's common space.