Towards a Different Mode of Abstraction: The Diorama in Hägerstrand's Experimentation in Thought

Abstract

AbstractTorsten Hägerstrand's career can be understood as a protracted experiment in thinking creatively about space and human–environment interactions. He continually sought to abstract – select, simplify and exclude – from the complexity of spatiotemporal processes in ways that differed from customs at a given point in time. This article argues that Hägerstrand's Diorama, Path and Project, one of TESG's most influential papers published in 1982, elaborated the diorama in English as a conceptual device to enact a different mode of abstraction in geography and interdisciplinary research. An undervalued conceptual device with which Hägerstrand was never entirely comfortable himself, the diorama is still worth engaging with at the current time of climate emergency.