Space, Place, and Identity in the Digital Age

Space: This week I would like to add the aspect of stories of the past and present being tied t a certain space. This space is always changing based on the context.

Place: I would like to add that place forces one to be aware of our position within a space. This continues to speak to the back and forth between space and place.

Questions:

1. Throughout Farman’s chapter, “Mappings and Representations of Space I kept thinking about the “imagined community” and its relationship to deportees. Space is imbued with meaning through our interactions with that space. How are deportees who have a history with the U.S. now reconfiguring their transnational ties with the U.S. and their respective countries? What does this imaginary look like for them since they are no longer in this space? What would their story look like in relation to the locale and global?
2. In the same chapter, Farman states, “…the digital space of the mobile device corresponds and permeates material space in meaningful ways” (53).  The rest of this section goes on to describe the ways in which the Haitian Diaspora is able to “identify with a community that is geographically distant from them.”  I am interested in discussing or exploring the ways in which concept of Diaspora and transnationalism are complicated when we are able to traverse boundaries digitally? What does this mean for ideas of national belonging
3. Bjorn Ingmunn Sletto, in the article, “We Drew What We imagined,” discusses the ways in which the process of mapping is always intertwined with power and culture. I would like to explore this more in terms of discussing how the imaginary is created and what that means to our understanding of the actual and virtual. I am intrigued by how map making is able to create stories that move space to place.  How does our knowledge of a space change in terms of mapping and our imaginary?