Thinking topographically: Place, space and geography

This paper examines how a spatial turn in the social sciences has brought about a particular constructivist way of thinking about place, space, and other related geographical concepts. Against the flow, the paper aims at putting forward topographic thinking where place is put at the centre of the understanding of the human. It presents a number of ideas (such as boundedness, determination, and critique) that shape the framework in which the concepts of place, space, and time are defined ontologically, and which provide a manner to reflect on the place of the human and thought itself.