Imaginative Geographies

Question 1

Imaginative Geographies

Answer 1

Representations of place, space and landscape that structure people’s understandings of the world, and in turn help to shape their actions.

Question 2

Valentine, 1999

Answer 2

These imaginative geographies hall to shape our sense not only of the reality of places, but of our most intimate sense of our selves

Question 3

Imaginative geographies are not:

Answer 3

Imaginative geographies are not somehow distinct from ‘real’ geographies - they help to define and shape culture we’re part of.
Imaginative geographies are not about ‘subjective’ perceptions as opposed to ‘objective’ facts - studied because they reveal collective culture meanings

Question 4

Edward Said, 1978

Answer 4

the term ‘imaginative geographies’ was first coined argued that non-western cultures in general have often been represented by western commentators as being static and backward. He also maintained that these images have played an important part in the historical construction of a contrasting image of Europe as dynamic and progressive.

Question 5

Edward Said role of other

Answer 5

Edward said’s work emphasises the role of the idea of Other int he construction of imaginative geographies of culture; he was concerned with the ways in which European history has often been conceived on the basis of an essential opposition between the civilised European and the uncivilised, or yet-to-be-civilised, non-European.

Question 6

Anderson, 1983

Answer 6

Imaginative geographies of a nation - they do not simply exist by virtue of location: they are constructed through the mobilisation of images