The Dictionary of Human Geography

I

iconography The description and interpret-
ation of visualimagesin order to disclose and
interpret their hermetic or symbolic meanings;
a hermeneutic practice, closely paralleled
by semiotics in linguistic studies. Initially
applied to religious icons and painted images,
and theorized as a methodology within
Renaissancearthistory by the cultural histor-
ian Erwin Panofsky, iconography was initially
introduced into human geography by Jean
Gottmann (1952) alongside ‘movement’ as
one of two counterposing forces structuring
thepolitical geographyofnations: the lat-
ter acting to integrateterritories, and the
former to separate them through local allegi-
ances. While this formulation acknowledged a
political efficacy on the part of cultural sym-
bols, its impact on geographical study was
limited, and only decades later was the sym-
bolic significance of national icons such as
landscapes, paintings, buildings and monu-
ments subjected to more systematic icono-
graphic analysis by geographers and others
(Daniels, 1993; Schama, 1995).
In contemporaryhuman geography, icon-
ography is principally used as a method of
landscapeandmap interpretation (Daniels
and Cosgrove, 1988; Harley, 2001b). Land-
scapes, both on the ground and in their repre-
sentation through various media such as maps,
painting and photography, can be regarded as
visible deposits of cultural meanings (see also
cartography, history of;visual methods).
The iconographic method seeks to address
these meanings through describing the form,
composition and content of such representa-
tions, disclosing their symbolic conventions
and language, and interpreting the signifi-
cances and implications of their symbolism
by re-immersing landscapes in their social
and historical contexts. Successful icono-
graphic interpretation requires close formal
reading, broad contextual knowledge, inter-
pretative sensitivity and persuasive writing
skills: it reveals human landscapes as both
shaped by and themselves active in shaping
broader social and cultural processes, and
thus possessed of powerful human signifi-
cance. Geographical iconography today ac-
cepts that landscape meanings are unstable
over time and between different groups,

always negotiated and contested, and thus

political in the broadest sense. Through this

recognition, a connection may be made in

terms of politics between current geographical

uses of iconography and Gottmann’s original

formulation. This is exemplified by the signifi-

cant body of work on landscapes, monu-

ments, spatial images and the expression and

performanceofidentitythat has been pro-

duced by geographers since the early 1990s

(see, e.g., Whelan, 2003). dco

Suggested reading

Atkinson and Cosgrove (1998).

ideal type An operational construct origin-

ally proposed by the sociologist Max Weber

(1864–1920) as a way of exposing the essen-

tials of a situation to analysis for particular

purposes: ‘An ideal type is formed by the

one-sided accentuation of one or more points

of view and by the synthesis of a great many

diffuse, discrete, more or less present and oc-

casionally absent concrete individual phenom-

ena, which are arranged according to those

one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a uni-

fied analytical construct.’ The ideal type is

‘ideal’ in the sense of ‘idealized’: it is always a

partial characterization of a phenomenon that,

by emphasizing particular features and ignor-

ing others (marginalizing them, holding them

constant), draws out what the analyst regards

as particularly important. It is thus purposive,

anabstraction, and ideal means ‘pure’ or

‘abstract’, with other elements stripped away

(cf.model). dg

idealism A humanist philosophy based

around the belief that the world is constructed

through the human mind (seehumanism).

Idealism’s assertion that ‘all reality is in some

way a mental construction so that the world

does not exist outside its observation and rep-

resentation by the individual has long been

posed against the positivistic epistemology

and its emphasis on objective evidence’

(Johnston, 1986, p. 55). Idealism was set in

opposition tomaterialism, which privileged

matter, rendering the import of mind or spirit

secondary, dependent or invisible. Ingeog-

raphy, this is most closely associated with

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