Mosaic and tapestry: Metaphors as geographical concept generators

Abstract

This paper examines the use of the metaphorical terms ‘mosaic’ and ‘tapestry’ in conceptualizing the structure of spatial organization over more than a century of geographic thought. The duality between a mosaic-like, discrete geography and a tapestry-like, indiscrete geography is one of the fundamental paradoxes in spatial ontology; this paper explores how this duality has configured the commitments of geography and continues to play a role in the more recent debate between ‘territorial’ and ‘relational’ spatial metaphors. It argues for a reconciliation of incompatible metaphors, since the complexity of the phenomenal world exceeds resolution into any single descriptive system.