[Reader-list] Posting V - Sarai Independent Fellowship

[Aparajita De]

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 IMAGINED GEOGRAPHIES: GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE OF SELF AND OTHERS IN EVERDAY LIFE.THE CASE OF AHMEDABAD


The final theoretical question that remains is how is space conceptualized? Theoretically my effort has been to go beyond monocausal explanatory models of self and other understanding and in favour of a dialectical relationship between space and society. How does the social consciousness of self merge with the spatial consciousness of self and vice-versa; and that of the social other with the spatial other?    

Levinson (1996) contends that human beings think spatially but not exclusively and ‘casting non-spatial problems into spatial thinking gives us literacy, geometry, diagrams, mandala, dream-time landscapes, measures of close and distant relatives and of high and low social groups and much more’. Extending his logic, I can say that space and spatial arrangements in particular can become an extension of self and also symbolically represent the other. Thus space is conceptualized not as an allocentric, abstract and absolute concept but as an egocentric, anthropomorphic and relative concept.   Spaces used, assigned to and occupied or acquired by self or other not only reflects their respective understandings of themselves but also the underlying power relations. Space emerges as an idea, an ideological discourse and an assemblage of text/texts which is being constantly created/recreated and creating/recreating understanding self of and others. Thus not only social meanings and are embedded in spatial concepts and meanings but spatial concepts and meanings are also rooted in social meanings and concepts. 

 


APARAJITA DE
Research Associate
Centre for Social Studies
South Gujarat University Campus
Udhna Magdalla Road
Surat 395007
Phone: 0261 2227173/74
       0 9825808100(m)
Fax:0261 2223851
email: css_surat at satyam.net.in