The geographic problematic: Empirical issues

The geographic problematic stems from the fact that we cannot accept reality as it is and so we create places to transform reality into what we think it ought to be, and then transform this new reality, and on and on. This paper explains how our place-making is essential in this transformation because place is a humanly constructed instrument that works much like a loom, helping us weave together elements of nature, meaning, and social relations to create projects and thus change reality into a new one. Understanding place's effect as an indispensable instrument sheds light on problems of identity, essentialism, scale, spatiality, the generic and specific, postmodernism, and our role as geographic agents.