Geographical Imagination Research Articles

Insecurity, incoherence, and imagined geographies in Central Europe

ABSTRACT This Commentary for the Research Colloquium on “Geopolitical Imaginaries of Regional Cooperation and National Identity: A Central European Perspective” foregrounds the significance of imagined geographies for driving policies, shaping nations, and making identities. It highlights the urgency of countering the self-aggrandizing, ethno-nationalist, illiberal, reductionist, and conservative imagined geographies that have emerged in recent years across Central Europe, in particular in Hungary. A more critical, pluralistic, and inclusive geopolitics of the region is presented in this Research Colloquium, which is in stark contrast to the attempts of certain political and intellectual elites to fix identities that foment mistrust and division within and between societies. The regional imaginaries espoused by some political leaders, and their tenuous historical and geographical grounding, tell us little about the geographical concepts and areas they purport to represent but much about the insecurities and agendas of the political elites who directly benefit from the uptake of these imaginings.

The socioenvironmental state and urban transitions: Eco-urbanism in China and the UK

Eco-urbanism encapsulates a range of approaches to the management of urbanisation processes and environmental imperatives in contexts of rapid industrial and economic change. The paper focuses on two eco-urban initiatives in China and the UK over a temporal lens stretching from the mid-2000s to the early 2020s, in order to critically engage with the question of how eco-urban projects develop and often undergo radical changes over time, as well as being changed through significant ruptures, periods of stasis and fluidity in the actor-networks involved in project visions, financing and development. Our comparative approach identifies cross-cutting processes operative across two projects at different scales and in different techno-political contexts. The paper argues that longitudinal analysis is key to enabling a view of transitional trajectories as unfolding, and as a way of moving past oft-repeated assessments of specific projects according to a ‘failure/success’ binary. In order to do so, the paper considers eco-urban projects through a theoretical lens that views projects as unstable assemblages exhibiting change over time on the one hand, but that also recognises the dynamic resilience of geographical imaginations around eco-urban projects, that means that these projects endure (albeit often in different guises) over time.

Modeling authority over a drowning coast

ABSTRACT As sea-level rise inundates the last vestiges of Louisiana’s “Working Coast” and protective wetlands, the state is embarking on controversial plans to redirect Mississippi River sediment into its degraded marshes. But in order to manipulate the Mighty Mississippi, state planners must not only marshal a proverbial army of resources, but somehow demonstrate the necessary expertise to do so. Here, I examine one such site of demonstration: the Lower Mississippi River Physical Model in Baton Rouge, La., where visitors can observe sediment diversions in action. I argue that this $18-million showpiece attempts to reinforce a particular imagined geography by the state over its landscape. Competent operation of the model dramatizes authority over the river itself, which presumably helps the State to build popular consent — in the face of entrenched resistance. This article demonstrates how seemingly technical instruments can function as political projects, which has wide-ranging implications for future climate action.

‘Uncertain Voyages of Signification’: Salvage Poetics of the Caribatopia

This essay considers how two comic books, Nalo Hopkinson’s House of Whispers (2018–2020) and Matthew Clarke and Nigel Lynch’s Hardears (2021), use a poetics of salvage to produce visually and textually rich speculative narratives that problematize Eurocentric versions of futurity. My argument is that the comic books conserve and preserve, through salvage, a diverse racial, spatial and historic archive from narratives that constantly remake bodies (human, animal, plant, metaphysical) alongside places and cosmologies within their larger imaginative geographies. They entangle nature, technology and ritual, and give rise to a Caribbean atopia, or what I term as ‘the Caribatopia’, the paradoxical qualities of an unconfined utopia or an inhospitable place marked by unusualness. These comic books by Caribbean creators augment the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of the region, allowing these narratives to become allegorical and political sites producing fantastic atopic settings for representations of resistance and worldbuilding in Caribbean and Caribbean diasporic life.

Ricardo Padrón. The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West

Ricardo Padrón. <i>The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West</i>

Constructing an Ideological Discourse of Imaginative Geography in Turkey

The author implements the constructivist approach to study the discourse of imaginary geography and its main concepts based on the analysis of the facts of the discourse – the main ideological texts that form the imaginary geography of Turkey in the 19th-21st centuries, and significant events like the publication of maps. The author considers the imaginative geography as a representative and performative discourse of power connected with historical memory and nation-building. The article demonstrates how Turkey, relying on the Turkic and Islamic ideological dominants, uses the technologies of force (G. Fields). State and media mapping is going along with the construction of architecture in territories inhabited by Turks and Muslims, which is carried out at the state level. The analysis showed that at this stage imaginative geography becomes a tool for promoting Turkey’s national interests not only in the post-Ottoman, but also in the post-Soviet spaces. It justifies Turkey’s active foreign policy and legitimizes it in the eyes of people inhabiting this imaginative geography. The inclusion of a religious component expands this geography to a worldwide reach. Through an imaginative geography, relying on the political ideas of Turkism that developed in the twentieth century and underwent Islamization, Turkey projects a new regional configuration, where its role becomes the leading one. Turkey’s active foreign policy includes maintaining its central position through a set of tools, such as humanitarian policy, constructing an imaginary geography and fixing it through the concepts of “geography-destiny” and “geography of the heart”, visualization through mapping. The author comes to the conclusion that although the example of Turkey in the use of imaginative geography is not unique, it demonstrates an example of the successful implementation of the technologies of force and should be taken into account when developing Russia’s foreign policy strategy.

Inspired by Iceland: Borealism and Geographical Imaginations of the North in Migrants’ Narratives

In this article, we apply the concept of borealism as introduced by Kristinn Schram (2011) as well as anthropological literature on the role of images in producing different forms of mobilities (Salazar, 2011; 2013), in order to unravel the ways through which geographical imaginaries of Iceland and the North have been appropriated, utilised and reproduced by migrants. We discuss how the tourism upsurge and the ideas of exotic, pure and authentic North actuated migration to Iceland, and how it affected migrants’ narratives. Based on ethnographic research, we seek to understand how these different representations of Iceland impact the way migrants think about and embody the place where they live, and how they reflect the borealist discourse in their own narratives. We particularly focus on the exotic image of Iceland and understanding of authenticity expressed by migrants settling in the Icelandic countryside.

Imaginäre Naturverhältnisse: Psychoanalytische Einsichten zur Herstellung ontologischer Sicherheit in Berlin, Vancouver und Singapur

Abstract. A central diagnosis driving research around social relations of nature is the thesis of the “end of nature”. In an era marked by climate change and global warming, the image of nature as a pristine and stable foundation of human existence seems outdated. In light of this, recent scholarship demonstrates how environmental changes and conflicts increasingly affect people's daily lives and present significant threats to psychic well-being. In contrast, in this paper we investigate the conditions under which nature continues to function as an effective source of `ontological security'. As part of an international comparative research project that engages geographical imaginaries of security and insecurity in Berlin, Vancouver, and Singapore, we analyze how nature is imagined by city dwellers as an object of desire that offers a place of refuge to escape the burdens from urban everyday life. Against this background, we emphasize imaginary nature as a powerful everyday source for the ontological security of subjects even under today's postnatural conditions.

Connections between Asian and European World Cities: Measurement, Analysis, and Evaluation

Although world regions continue to be a key feature of the geographical imagination, there has been relatively little innovative research on world regionalization through the lens of city connections. Against the backdrop of an increasingly urban and interconnected world, in this paper, we evaluate the connections between European and Asian world cities. Based on a model conjecturing intercity connections through office locations of globalized producer services firms, we analyze the networks of both regions’ major cities. To this end, we establish frameworks that allow (1) comparison of the level of connectivity of cities and (2) analysis of the strength and orientation of the interactions between cities. We find that both Europe and Asia have a larger number of well-connected cities than any other world region. Both regions are roughly comparable in terms of the distribution of their urban connectivities, but there are some notable differences (e.g., Asia’s system being more top-heavy) and evolutions (e.g., Asian cities gaining more connectivity over the last decade). There are also two geographical dimensions to the interpretations of these patterns of urban connectivity: (1) the variegated importance of state-spaces (e.g., national gateways) and (2) the uneven regional focus of intercity connections (e.g., Luxembourg and Singapore being less dependent on regional connections). We use our findings to argue that the time is ripe for a more nuanced and contextualized answer to the question of how cities (can) act politically on the global scale in general and Asia–Europe relations in particular.

World Heritage Subjects or Citizens? Geographical Imaginations and Displacement of Local Communities

World Heritage Subjects or Citizens? Geographical Imaginations and Displacement of Local Communities

Geographies of running cultures and practices

AbstractRunning is inherently geographical, with spaces, places, movement and bodies central to the practice. Running has captured the geographical imagination over the last decade and this paper reaches across such work to provide a state‐of‐the‐art synthesis of the geographies of running. The review is structured around six key themes that characterise contemporary running geographies and demonstrate the value geography and running bring to each other: (1) different running practices; (2) theorising and researching running; (3) senses, experiences and embodiment; (4) running, space and place; (5) events; and (6) technologies and objects. The paper concludes by considering what is next for running geographies by highlighting three new avenues: (1) further engagement with digital geographies; (2) the runnability of places; and (3) diversifying who does running geography and who it studies.

The Insta-Gaze: investigating the endurance of stereotypes of Africa

ABSTRACT Instagram – the widely popular photo sharing app – impacts how people imagine places, making it a useful platform for cultural geographers to examine the power of representation in our contemporary era. Utilizing visual methodologies, we analyze popular images on Instagram that deal with the topic of everyday life in Africa to understand not only what gets represented but what resonates with viewers/consumers. Our analysis focuses on one of the most popular Africa-themed Instagram accounts – @everydayafrica – to interrogate the power of social media platforms on geographic imaginations. To get at user perceptions, we collected information on which images were most liked and commented on and analyzed whether these images reinforce or work against extant stereotypes of Africa to interrogate how and whether decolonial resistance in representation is possible on a digital platform dependent on sharing and liking content. We used postcolonial scholarship to identify controlling images of the continent and examined whether users were more responsive to common tropes. Overall, we found that the most-liked images reinforce existing stereotypes and in so doing replicate the colonial gaze. We contend that the way Africa is visually consumed has real, material consequences.

China's Water Governmentality and the Shaping of Hydrosocial Territories in the Lancang-Mekong Region

AbstractThis paper examines China's water governmentality in advancing the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC). It attends to how discourses, used as a political instrument, are framed, justified and contested in the reshaping of international hydrosocial territories. China's official and popular discourses present the LMC as promoting multilateral politics, economic benefits and social integration, while they obscure polarizing politics, external interventions and regional conflicts. Using strategies of positive publicity first, top-down communication and mutual empathy creation, these discourses aim to deflect attention away from controversies and geopolitics in the region to construct governable hydrosocial territories. However, in a transnational context where the Chinese state cannot unilaterally control geographical imaginaries, alternative discourses depict China as a “hydro-hegemon” that poses threats to downstream countries. The discursive dichotomy reflects multiple ontologies of water and power struggles in international river governance, bringing regional stability and sustainable development into question.

Amor Loci: Auden in Rookhope

I present a conspectus of the imaginative geography of the English poet WH Auden. This imaginative geography is avowedly the product of a rootless, cosmopolitan which extols domestic virtues against the backcloth of an originary poetic homeland in Rookhope in the Northern Pennines of England. Auden’s poetry addresses eternal questions about the conditions under which communities thrive or decline, what dividends they bestow upon their members, the costs and benefits of choosing to cultivate local knowledge and attachments and how communities coexist at different scales. Auden’s topopoetics reflects his search for affective bonds in a life marked otherwise by placelessness. It is a quest for a sense of place in the absence of insideness – in this respect it affects more widespread concerns of how to belong to place in an age of hyper-globalisation. Although the landscape of the Northern Pennines held a profound aesthetic attraction for Auden, it was the numinous experience of his youth in Rookhope that allowed him to attach his poetic and personal biography to the place and ascribe its meaning. This amounted to a kind of elective belonging, albeit stripped of any sociological connotation or political commitment.

On an ethic of not going there

AbstractFieldwork – “going there” – is the presumed norm and baseline of geographical research. In this commentary, I propose a framework for challenging the normative framing of fieldwork in geography and other fields (including those beyond academia): an ethic of not going there. I argue that fieldwork, rather than a neutral rite of passage, is deeply entwined with some of the most entrenched issues in contemporary geography and research more broadly. Building on a range of prior critiques and using the lens of “access”, I propose some ways for critiquing the presumptions inherent in geographical imaginaries of “fieldwork”. This ethical framework argues that doing geographical fieldwork should have to be justified to the same extent as not doing fieldwork is expected to be justified. I envision an ethic of not (always) going there as an alternative way of thinking about research (and researchers) within and beyond geography.

Planting flags in water

In this commentary, I respond to James Riding and Carl Dahlman's article, ‘Montage space: borderlands, micronations, terra nullius, and the imperialism of the geographical imagination’. I build on their arguments about ‘more-than-dry landscapes’ to consider how the relationship between fluid and non-fluid landscapes sheds light on the construction and contestation of political space. To do so, I offer additional examples of how people plant flags in water, shedding light on the political implications of how physical territories are imagined, claimed, and sometimes, simply created at the fluid/non-fluid interface.

Intersectional Sensibilities and the Spatial Analyses of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Ellen Churchill Semple

Feminist geographies have long provided geographers with methodologies for dislodging hegemonic structures of knowledge production. Recently, feminist geographers have taken up the challenges posed by the theory of intersectionality to analyze questions of place, power, and difference. In this article, we advance this trajectory by arguing for an “intersectional sensibility” in feminist geography methodologies. To illustrate this approach, we elevate the work of investigative journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931), who used qualitative and quantitative data to analyze the nature and severity of anti-Black violence in the United States. We place her work alongside that of Ellen Churchill Semple (1863–1932), a contemporary of Wells-Barnett, who promoted environmental determinism. We argue that Wells-Barnett’s research practices produced geographic knowledge that articulated a standpoint that revealed spatial relationships of power that undergirded oppression; disrupted spatial analyses arising from single-axis thinking; was concerned with ending geographies of violence and injustice; and contributed to unlearning prevailing geographical imaginaries. We offer a methodological intervention grounded in an intersectional sensibility for feminist geography as well as a demonstration of more inclusive disciplinary practices that expand thinking about methods and methodological accountability.

Where is Liberland? Ideology and power beyond territory

In response to James Riding and Carl Dahlman's thought-provoking article, I wish to question the link between the self-proclaimed micronation Liberland and the territory of Gornja Siga. Indeed, if we consider that the real location of Liberland is in cyberspace, and not on the small terra nullius stuck on the banks of the Danube, at the Croatian-Serbian border, the reflection refers to other ‘geographical imaginaries’, putting forward the libertarian ideology of the protagonists, and the articulation between militant networks and technologies, which make possible the emergence of this ‘private state’ without a proper territory. Would the claim of Gornja Siga be then only the territorial camouflage of a political movement ‘off-ground’?

Legitimizing viewing publics through nostalgia: the mediated tropicality of Singapore’s ‘kampong spirit’

abstract Using two recent films—Long Long Time Ago and Diam Diam Era—this article analyses how Jack Neo communicates a sanitized nostalgia for the “kampong spirit” through his films, which calibrates willing acceptance of the Singapore government’s authoritarian rule. In supporting the state’s presentist historiography, the films of Jack Neo induce a depoliticization of unpleasant memories arising from the ruling party’s unpopular housing and language policies of the past. The nostalgia mediated in both films is aligned towards an imaginary geography and mental map of a First World nation, which exhorts Singaporeans to disavow “the tropics” by nostalgizing the state’s modernization efforts. The cumulative thrust of an evidence-free and presentist nostalgia ostensible in both films, this work argues, satisfies the paternalistic state’s obsession with the public legitimation of its ruling mandate.

Immobility as loyalty: ‘Voluntariness’ and narratives of a duty to stay in the context of (non)migration decision making

In order to broaden research into different forms of immobility, this article explores how immobility can be motivated by a sense of duty to stay by using data collected from residents of São Paulo, Brazil who had decided not to emigrate despite having the capability to do so. This is in the context of the increasing out-migration that Brazil is experiencing. The article argues that immobility that is motivated by a duty to stay cannot easily be classified as either voluntary or involuntary. Instead, the term ‘active immobility’ is proposed. Staying from a sense of duty to small-scale imagined social object such as ‘family’ is well documented. However, when analysing how duty can influence immobility, variations in scale are particularly important since the larger a social object is the less tangible and more abstract it becomes and thus there is a greater likelihood that there will be contestation about what that social object ‘looks like’. This article thus focuses on how a sense of duty to large scale social and geographical imaginaries such as ‘country’, ‘nation’ and ‘people’ impact (non)migration decision making. Exploring a sense of duty to be immobile amongst stayers thus reveals not only the geographical dimensions of motivations to stay but also the contested nature of the social objects that people imagine themselves as loyal to. The context is the recent political crisis in Brazil starting with the lava jato [car wash] corruption scandal and culminating in the election of President Jair Bolsonaro. These events polarised public opinion and exposed the contested nature of geographical imaginaries such as ‘Brazil’ or social imaginaries such as ‘the people’.