The Dictionary of Human Geography

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metageography ‘The set of spatial struc-

tures through which people order their know-

ledge of the world: the often unconscious

frameworks that organize studies of history,

sociology, anthropology, economics, political

science, or even natural history’ (Lewis and

Wigen, 1997, p. ix). The prefix ‘meta-’ implies

anabstraction, a concept that in some sense

goes beyond the term to which it implies, so by

extension a metageography is a conceptual grid

that structures how geographies are ordered.

These grids are cultural constructions, and the

emphasisLewisand Wigen placeonthefactthat

they are used more or less automatically and

unconsciously, without critical reflection, con-

nects the concept to that of ageograhical im-

aginary. ‘Meta-’ can also imply an umbrella

concept, and Lewis and Wigen focus their at-

tentionontheglobalscaleandtheconventional

division of the world intocontinents. But the

division of theglobeinto a mosaic ofstatesis

no less commonplace and taken-for-granted,

against which Beaverstock, Smith and Taylor

(2000) have proposed ‘a new metageography’:

a globalnetworkof flows between cities. dg

metaphor For Aristotle, a metaphor ‘consists

in giving the thing a name that belongs to some-

thing else’. Such practice is rampant inhuman

geography, as in other disciplines: cities are

plant biomes (chicago school), cultural

landscapes are texts, economic localities

are geological strata ‘layers of investment’ and

non-renewableresourcestake onalife-cycle.

While pervasive, some writers have criti-

cized metaphors for being ornamental and

obfuscatory. Plato said that they make ‘trifle

points seem important, and important points

trifles’, while Thomas Hobbes believed that

they ‘deceive others’, and in geography,

Harvey (1967, p. 551) argued that they ‘hinder

objective judgment’. In each of these cases,

metaphor was attacked because it resulted in

ambiguity: it is ‘a sort of extra happy trick with

words’, as I.A. Richards (1936, p. 90) put it.

More generally, such misgivings result from a

particular view oflanguage held by such

critics: that language should be transparent,

limpid and utterly dependable, all of which

are undermined by metaphor.

Over the twentieth century there was an

increasing recognition that language takes on

none of those characteristics (see, in particu-

lar, deconstruction) and, concomitantly,

that metaphors are an indispensable part of

both writing and theorizing. Metaphorical

use comes in two shapes and sizes (Barnes

and Curry, 1992).

Small metaphorsthat pepper individual writ-

ing and research are part of the very infra-

structure of language construction, an

‘omnipresent principle’ (Richards, 1936,

p. 92). Mobilizing them requires skill and

sensitivity, forming an important component

ofrhetoric, the attempt to persuade others of

the force of one’s argument by using tropes

such as metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003

[1980]).Large metaphors, in contrast, struc-

ture entire researchparadigms. Some, such

as ‘organism’ or ‘mechanism’, are so deeply

ingrained that they become ‘root metaphors’

(Pepper, 1942), whereas others are only tem-

porary, mobilized for a particular use and then

discarded. However long their durability, all

large metaphors operate through a process of

‘metaphorical re-description’ (Hesse, 1980);

that is, transferring meanings and associations

of one system in order to re-describe the expla-

nandum (the part of the explanation that does

the explaining) of another system. An example

is Isaac Newton’s metaphorical re-description

of sound in terms of waves. Metaphorical

re-description is ubiquitous, as well as ‘poten-

tially revolutionary’ (Arib and Hesse, 1986).

When Adam Smith coined the metaphor of

the ‘invisible hand’ to describe the efficacy of

themarket, or when Marx said ‘workers have

nothing to lose but their chains’, or when

Bunge (1966, p. 27) asked, ‘Why cannot ...

concepts dealing with exotic and dioric

streams be applied to highways?’ revolutions,

albeit of different kinds, were set in motion.

There has been sporadic interest in metaphor

ingeographysince the 1960s, when the pro-

ponents ofspatial sciencefirst discussed the

linkages betweenmodelsand metaphors (Hag-

gett and Chorley, 1967). Later, those who ad-

vocated a humanistic geography,suchas

Tuan (1978) and Livingstone and Harrison

(1981b), were drawn to metaphors because of

resonances with human creativity and meaning,

twin planks of the larger project (see also

humanities). Most recently, critical attention

has come from geographers interested inepis-

temology. Large metaphors sometimes carry

unexamined intellectual freight, resulting in

unintentional and sometimes contradictory

meanings. They need tobeunpacked,inspected

critically for their coherence, consistency and

compatibility. Doing so also means scrutinizing

their historical and material origins. Metaphors

require ‘worlding’ (Smith and Katz, 1993). tb

Suggested reading

Lakoff and Johnson (1980); Smith and Katz

(1993).

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METAGEOGRAPHY