Spatial Imaginaries Research in Geography: Synergies, Tensions, and New Directions

Abstract Human geographers have produced a diverse, and growing, body of literature documenting the existence and consequence of spatial imaginaries. However, reviews explaining and evaluating how geographers conceptualize and empirically verify spatial imaginaries, along with the field's tensions and potential directions, are lacking. This article addresses this gap by assessing geography's spatial imaginary literature. I identify shared features across the literature, while arguing geographers have, in fact, verified three different kinds of spatial imaginaries: imaginaries of places, idealized spaces, and spatial transformations. The article recommends researchers better account for these three, both their differences and relationalities. I also explain and evaluate geography's four competing conceptions of spatial imaginaries' ontology. Some geographers see them as semiotic orders, other geographers believe them to be worldviews, yet spatial imaginaries are predominantly viewed as representational discourse. Recently, however, some geographers have argued them to be performative discourses. This article advocates viewing spatial imaginaries as performative; arguing this view – among other things – clarifies the association between spatial imaginaries and material practices while offering new research directions for the field.