Affective cartography

This study is an exploratory journey towards the concept designated affective cartography. Grounded on the assumption that people’s imagination is filled with meaningful places, the research proposed to go one step further and investigate if these places are somehow organized as to form an imaginary geography, and whether this imaginary geography could be represented in a map. Promoting an ongoing conversation between the world of the imagination and the real world that surround us, this study begins with an objective identification of the places that inhabit the mind and follows into the actual production of an emotional map. By intertwining these two worlds the expectation is to understand a little better how and in what ways the interaction between individuals and places develop. And by giving tangibility to a subjective matter the hope is to go deeper into the human capability to explore and produce space. Maps were the instrument chosen to mediate this conversation. As an important human artifact, maps are able to promote knowledge but also to reproduce or reinforce historical or subjective bias. Here they will be used as a useful, despite subjective, device, responsible for translating the individual topography of the mind into a symbolic tangible object, embedded both socially and culturally. Assuming that the map-making ability is universally given, just like imagination itself, this study worked with relative freedom in regards to the sample. Hence a qualitative research was conducted with Rotterdam (NL) residents during the month of April 2017. The results demonstrate that the concept is a valid one and one with many possibilities for further development. The results contribute to the already existent production regarding the human relationship with places and spaces, by identifying patterns and categorizing the places that are somehow related to affection. In addition the investigation process has verified that maps are a fascinating artifact with many possibilities for scientific production, however with modest attention from the contemporary sociological viewpoint. The implications have shown that, despite not being so frequent in people’s everyday lives, an affective cartography is possible and it can be a very fruitful route to human imagination.