Hodges' Model: Welcome to the QUAD: cogneography

Hodges' model is a conceptual framework to support reflection and critical thinking. Situated, the model can help integrate all disciplines (academic and professional). Amid news items, are posts that illustrate the scope and application of the model. A bibliography and A4 template are provided in the sidebar. Welcome to the QUAD ...

Showing posts with label cogneography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cogneography. Show all posts

Friday, March 06, 2026

The land speaks through Bears & Peoples: Together

Figure 2

ABSTRACT

Landscape genetic analyses of wildlife populations can exclude variation in a broad suite of potential spatiotemporal correlates, including consideration of how such variation might have similarly influenced people over time. Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) populations in what is now known as coastal British Columbia, Canada, provide an opportunity to examine the possible effects of a complex set of landscape and human influences on genetic structure. In this collaboration among the Nuxalk, Haíɫzaqv, Kitasoo/Xai’xais, Gitga’at, and Wuikinuxv First Nations and conservation scientists, we characterized patterns of genetic differentiation in the grizzly bear, a species of high cultural value, by genotyping 22 microsatellite loci from noninvasively collected hair samples over a 23,500 km² area. We identified three well-differentiated groups. Resistance surfaces, which incorporated past and present human use, settlement, and landscape resistant features, could not explain this pattern of genetic variation. Notably, however, we detected spatial alignment between Indigenous language families and grizzly bear genetic groups. Grizzly bears sampled within an area represented by a given language family were significantly similar to those sampled within that language family (P = 0.001) and significantly divergent to those sampled outside the language family (P = 0.001). This spatial co-occurrence suggests that grizzly bear and human groups have been shaped by the landscape in similar ways, creating a convergence of grizzly bear genetic and human linguistic diversity. Additionally, grizzly bear management units designated by the provincial government currently divide an otherwise continuous group and exclude recently colonized island populations that are genetically continuous with adjacent mainland groups. This work provides not only insight into how ecological and geographic conditions can similarly shape the distribution of people and wildlife but also new genetic evidence to support renewed, locally led management of grizzly bears into the future.

INDIVIDUAL
|
    INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               
HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      
SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 
|
GROUP
'This work is dedicated to the late Nuaqawa (Evelyn Windsor), who taught us that people learned their language and way of life from the bears.'

Geographic distance

Spatial overlap

Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos)

Population genetic structure

Landscape genetics

 

Biocultural diversity

Indigenous language families

Human linguistic diversity

Awareness - Respect


 [What price the future? pj]


Henson, L. H., N. Balkenhol, R. Gustas, M. Adams, J. Walkus, W. G. Housty, A. V. Stronen, J. Moody, C. Service, D. Reece, B. M. vonHoldt, I. McKechnie, B. F. Koop, and C. T. Darimont. 2021. Convergent geographic patterns between grizzly bear population genetic structure and Indigenous language groups in coastal British Columbia, Canada. Ecology and Society 26(3):7.
https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12443-260307

My source:
Roman Goergen. Grizzly spoken here! Resurgence & Ecologist, July/August2023: 339: pp.10-11.

See also: https://iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/documents/p21799/85674E.pdf

Previously: 'landscape' : 'ecology'

Thursday, June 26, 2025

You say Hodges' model is a map. What's the scale?

"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"

"About six inches to the mile."

""Only six inches!"exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"

"Have you used it much?" I enquired.

"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."
        Lewis Carroll - The Complete Illustrated Works. Gramercy Books, New York (1982). Page 727.


My source
Text: https://people.duke.edu/~ng46/topics/lewis-carroll.htm

Plus a letter in FTWeekend: by Prof. R.T. Harrison. 'Country as its own map served as well' https://www.ft.com/content/2ad8ea16-d27d-11e1-abe7-00144feabdc0 1 Sept. 2012.

Wednesday, June 09, 2021

Cognitive Cartography Is ...

individual
|
 
 INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
|
group
Cognitive Cartography is ..


Physical




and Social.







 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-search-of-the-brains-social-road-maps/

Schafer, M., Schiller, D., The Brain's Social Road Maps, Scientific American, 322: 2, FEB 2020. pp.22-27.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-search-of-the-brains-social-road-maps/

Previously:

https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2009/07/cogeographic-or-cogneographic-concepts.html

Thursday, February 08, 2018

Grid Corrections at a Crossroads



or Grid Care Corrections at a Crossroads?


GERCO DE RUIJTER

My source:
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/961542009193402368

Thursday, November 09, 2017

Due South - 360 degree perspectives



Andy Goldsworthy "Touching North" (1989)

Being a cultural theorist the concept of ‘the south’ is particularly interesting to me (as are the other points of the compass, since they are often set in binaries and have values attached to them when set in opposition – for example the North/South divide in Britain). Coverley begins the introduction by showing us a 17th century map of the south pole and then describes the work by the artist Andy Goldsworthy entitled Touching North (1989) (see below). Touching North was situated at the North Pole, with the four individual parts of the sculpture facing each other and also outwards, with holes in the centre providing them with an opening which enabled them a space accessible from anywhere and everywhere. Coverley says that the sculpture “demonstrates how the directions of the compass may effectively be rendered meaningless: emerge through any of the four arches and one finds oneself heading south” (page 9). From:
http://particulations.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/south-by-merlin-coverley.html


INDIVIDUAL
|
interpersonal : science
humanistic --------------------------------------- mechanistic
sociology : political
|
GROUP and POPULATION


N


S

NORTH?


SOUTH?


Photo: "Touching North" from:
http://beautifuldecay.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/goldsworthy-andy-1989-touching-north.jpg

Additional link:
http://www.goldsworthy.cc.gla.ac.uk/

Friday, September 08, 2017

Hodges' model: a New Invention

Created in the early 1980s, Hodges' model is clearly not a -

'New Invention' P. Halling

While Hodges' model is not a new invention, we have always needed to way-find. Maps are very powerful and even more so now that the world is literally within our grasp. What forms of way-finding can Hodges' model encompass ...


Psyche's journey: All aboard!?
The journey that is life and death... within which and beyond is the arrival of love.
The anatomy and physiology of the human body - the journey called development.
The wound healing journey, the granulated path.
The many skills to become more acutely aware of and honed to be a more effective communicator.
The ways and means by which a clinical procedure MUST be followed - with the essential detours that must include psychological considerations and assuring that 
dignity, respect and privacy are upheld.
This ineffable stuff called information how do we arrive there from data?
From information what is the direction of travel to knowledge - 
is W1S D0M a postcode?
This ineffable stuff called evidence, where is that to be found 
and then by what routes can it be applied?
The journey of the health and social care record from blank to comprehensive.
The journey past the signage (paper ... IT systems) that denotes local vocabularies.
The student's journey from novice to expert.
The patient's journey from illness to recovery; relapse to recovery, 
through palliative care to end of life.
Transitions: from care at home, to hospital, home or residential setting.
The patient's journey to hospital: paramedics, ambulance, corridors and bays, 
accident & emergency, ward, transfers, home.
The patient's narrative journey repeated to own doctor, paramedics, nurse, another doctor, social worker, physiotherapist, occupational therapist (not as long as it used to be?).
Crisis informational: worry - going for tests, scan ... attending clinic for results.
 Informational and temporal compression of the above due to headwinds of pressure on beds.
Self-referral journey to destinations (services) and agencies to be confirmed.
The medication journey (not yet personalised) absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion.
The other medication journey that precedes (reconnoitre) rationale, information giving, consent, titration, established regime, withdrawal, medication stopped.
The terrible journey that sees family losing their loved ones twice over.
Explicit and implicit journeys how closely observed formally and informally.
The trip around the other hubs that also turn: the bed hub, social services hub...
The journey through the calendar that is reflected in so many diaries.
The journey called supervision and why is the start session square so hard to find - time for?
The journey called allocation from referral to assignment of care coordinator. 
The journey through procedure land which includes a territory called complaints.
There is the healthcare journey that claims respect as it is predicated upon the postcode.
The journey of idealism and legacy that is called integrated, 
person centred, holistic care and reflective practice...?
Care programme approach review - initial, intermediate, discharge meeting and community review.
The path clearly delineated but less (not yet) travelled
 - health promotion, preventive medicine, self-care, self-efficacy and health literacy (education).
The journey through so many environments: inner - outer space.
The journey that is hope... and Psyche's way-finder...

How many of the care domains of Hodges' model 
do you ensure you pass through - including the spiritual?

Of course, this list only scratches the surface...

All these journeys can be found and navigated through Hodges' model.

NORTH
|
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
WEST--------------------------------------- EAST
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
|
SOUTH






As for the sign 'New Invention'...

Last Saturday at 0700 I left WN4 and headed south for Hay-on-Wye. I arrived at 0930 after passing through Clun and the hamlet of New Invention. I returned with a box of secondhand books, including a couple on education history purchased on my last visit in November 2015. These were useful in the studies at Lancaster. Once sold, 22 books in all, I had £20. Six other books went to the charity shop. An enjoyable trip.

Photo by Philip Halling, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

Saturday, July 22, 2017

The harmony of opposites: to relativize the continuous / discontinuous dualism by Michel Lussault

"If we accept a somewhat schematic presentation, we can estimate that the modern Western knowledge system has been deployed on the basis of opposition couples conceived as expressing unquestionable dualities. These couples organized thought, all its activities, under all its regimes including the knowledge of expertise and the knowledge of common sense, and they constituted a kind of cognitive dogmatics; That is to say, they made it possible to define the very relevance of the problems that could be posed. From these dualities, and for a long time from these dualities alone, it has been permitted and legitimate to pose a number of social, political and cultural problems and then to find ways of solving these problems. In view of our integration into the cultural space of the modern West, we all know and experience the prevalence of these antagonistic duos which have structured the thought and continue, albeit in a somewhat more discreet way, -tender." *
Google translation French to English from:

LUSSAULT, Michel. L’harmonie des contraires : pour relativiser le dualisme continu/discontinu In: Continu et discontinu dans l’espace géographique [online]. Tours: Presses universitaires François-Rabelais, 2008 (generated 22 July 2017). Available on the Internet: <http://books.openedition.org/pufr/2398>. ISBN: 9782869063198. DOI: 10.4000/books.pufr.2398.

Original:
"On peut estimer, si l’on accepte une présentation un peu schématique, que le système de connaissance moderne occidental s’est déployé à partir du fondement constitué par des couples d’opposition conçus comme exprimant des dualités incontestables. Ces couples ont organisé la pensée, toutes ses activités, sous tous ses régimes y compris les savoirs d’expertise et les savoirs du sens commun, et ils ont constitué une sorte de dogmatique cognitive ; c’est-à-dire qu’ils ont permis de définir la pertinence même des problèmes qui pouvaient être posés. À partir de ces dualités, et pendant longtemps de ces dualités seulement, il a été autorisé et légitime de poser un certain nombre de problèmes sociaux, politiques, culturels et de trouver ensuite des modes de résolution de ces problèmes. Nous connaissons et éprouvons tous encore, compte tenu de notre insertion dans l’espace culturel de l’Occident moderne, la prégnance de ces duos antagonistes qui ont structuré la pensée et continuent, fût-ce de façon un peu plus discrète, de la sous-tendre."
* sous-tendre - 'to underlie it'?


Sunday, November 02, 2014

Sohei Nishino - Dioramas: Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Shanghai, London ... Jerusalem

individual
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ------------------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
group
Jerusalem © Sohei Nishino

Jerusalem 2012-13
Nishino's maps aren't supposed to be geographically accurate. "It is simply the town seen through the eyes of a single individual," he says, "a trace of the way I walked through it." He uses a film camera and develops the images himself before painstakingly cutting and assembling them into a collage.

The Sunday Times, Magazine, p.50-51. 19 October 2014.

[politics of (some) places] pj



Michael Hoppen Gallery (30 October - January 7):
http://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/

My source: Scenes from the cutting room floor, 19 October 2014, Spectrum, The Sunday Times, 49-52.
Image - Jerusalem, source:
http://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artist,show,3,161,485,2753,0,0,0,0,michael_hoppen_contemporary.htmlJerusalem

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Book: Thinking as Communicating - Sfard (the intra- interpersonal domain)

Previously I wondered about a term that might combine thinking and the formation and process of mental mapping, the creation of a conceptual map - a mental conceptual geography - cogneography?

Thinking as Communicating
Finding Anna Sfard's 1998 paper this past week led me to her book. The following is from the introduction:
I define thinking as individualized form of interpersonal communication. The disappearance of the time-honored dichotomy is epitomized in the term commognition, which combines communication with cognition. The commognitive tenet implies that verbal communication, with its distinctive property of recursive self-reference, may be the primary source of humans’ unique ability to accumulate the complexity of their action from one generation to another.

Sfard's work will have to go on the 'to read' pile (part-time studies begin tomorrow), but it may help provide ways to understand and unravel the intra- and interpersonal domain within Hodges' model. The mathematical emphasis (even though I may struggle with this) is an added bonus.

Sfard, A. Thinking as communicating: Human development, the growth of discourses, and mathematizing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27(2), pp. 4-13.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

2013 Year of Piri Reis & Navigating the world of nursing care - in Jordan

The conference in Jordan is over it has been an intense and excellent two days, with a free day tomorrow. It has been a brilliant opportunity to share and learn not just about nursing, but travel, culture and some of the people that make up the global nursing community.

I am truly grateful to the Jordanian Nursing Council for accepting my abstract. The welcome and hospitality has been truly amazing.

In the flight magazine on the way here there was an article about Piri Reis, which reminded me of Paul Cunliffe's book about Pytheas.

From the UNESCO website:

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has agreed to declare 2013 the year of Piri Reis on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of a map he drew up that included seven continents, reported the Anatolia news agency. 
“This map marks a significant event in the history of the country and has enabled its collective knowledge to be transmitted through generations. As a rare world map from the 15th and 16th centuries, Piri Reis World Map is an invaluable piece of the world's documentary heritage as it provides insight on the history of its time. It is therefore part of the Memory of the World and should be made better known,” stated UNESCO.

The world-renowned Ottoman captain and cartographer Reis is best known for world maps and charts collected in his “Kitab-ı Bahriye” (Book of Navigation).
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=294065

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_Reis_map


I have written before about Hodges' model as a map -

a cognitive periplus 

- for navigation through the complex world(s) of health and social care.

Would a new mariner take to the sea without a clear sky, a compass, map, or satnav? What then of our students?


Additional link: Please see the entry for Iran -

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/celebrations/anniversaries-celebrated-by-member-states/2013/

Sunday, November 25, 2012

CASA - Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis: Working Papers

Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2012 10:24:30 +0000
From: Willard McCarty
Subject: CASA Working Papers


Many here will find something of interest, I suspect, in the Working Papers series of the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London,
http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/casa/latest/publications/working-papers


[updated]
 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/casa/about-us/publications

In particular my eye was caught by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin, "The ethics of forgetting in an age of pervasive computing", CASA Working Paper 92.

Undoubtedly those with GIS-related concerns will find much more than that.
Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty, FRAI / Professor of Humanities Computing & Director of the Doctoral Programme, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London; Professor, School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, University of Western Sydney; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
(www.isr-journal.org); Editor, Humanist
(www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist/); www.mccarty.org.uk/


My source:  Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 26, No. 520. www.dhhumanist.org/
With CASA logo added here. 
                

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Notes (III) for a 2010 introduction to the Health Career Model

Definition through purpose

The original purposes for the model's creation are as relevant today as they were in 1983-84:

1. To produce a curriculum development tool;
2. Help ensure holistic assessment and evaluation;
3. To support reflective practice;
4. To reduce the theory-practice gap.

Items 1-4 plus safety are all dependent in one way or another upon knowledge. Admittedly, this is a case of stating the obvious and something of a non-statement in that everything comes down to being knowledge (or nonsense). Resort to some global notion of 'knowledge' amounts to non-differentiation and this tells us nothing. On the contrary: this is how the simplicity of Hodges' model can cultivate and give rise to global complexity. This can help explain the model's potential and utility as a cognitive tool, an aide memoire, a mental prompt and structured conceptual checklist to frame:

  • thought
  • knowledge (ontology)
  • perspectives
  • dialogue
  • problems
  • strengths - weaknesses
  • plans and actions
  • outcomes
  • and much more ...
Whether student or specialist practitioner various conceptual elements and (care) threads can be acquired, constructed, integrated and mapped from the dual (in-situ) worlds of theory and practice to the cognitive (personal - reflective) and virtual [cogeographic?]. This means the model can be used as a mental prompt helping to inform theory as in a lecture and subsequent essay; or practically during an interview or care assessment. Beyond this cognitive application, the model's produced can then also be captured and represented on paper, or as an electronic record - by various user communities. ... (Notes IV to follow)

[These are notes. If you have any thoughts, views on a new introduction to the model please get in touch:
h2cmng @ yahoo.co.uk
What do you feel needs to be explained? Which audience should be addressed in the first instance? What assumptions can be made? ....? Many thanks PJ ]

Notes I intro for 2010


Notes II intro for 2010

Saturday, July 25, 2009

h2cm: Original purposes and 21st century additions

Listed below are the four reasons that prompted Brian Hodges to create Hodges' model in the early-mid 1980s, these being to support:

  1. reflective practice (Moon, 2004; Jasper, 2006) ;
  2. holistic care (Brooker and Waugh, 2007);
  3. curriculum development;
  4. bridging the theory – practice gap. (Doherty, 2009)
Although nursing, health care and society have changed to a revolutionary extent these original purposes are still outstanding some 25 years later as the authors above and many others testify.

Perhaps in the next few years it would be timely for researchers to revisit the original stimuli and consider afresh the role of Hodges' model within nursing theory and practice and beyond. I believe the relevance of the model grows not because of the constant need for the big picture, but the need to represent and consider new dichotomies and challenges. To the original four then we might add:

  • To inform the socio-technical application of information and communications technologies in health and social care;
  • To conceptually ground (domain relate) and integrate the 4Ps of PROCESS, PURPOSE, PRACTICE, POLICY in theory and practice;
  • To provide a universal conceptual framework to conjoin all multidisciplinary teams across the 4Cs of COMMUNICATION, COLLABORATION, CO-ORDINATION, CONTINUITY and COMPLEXITY*;
  • To inform research in what may be termed ‘cogeographics’ the fusion of conceptual spaces and visualization in the humanities - social sciences.
The 4Ps and 4Cs provide a further aide memoir for students and practitioners to accurately locate situated care. Finally, nursing and health, social care as a profession is bound to a code of practice, accountability and has an educational – public (mental) health duty to the aims and objectives of the global health community. Cogeographic (or cogneographic) may be a neologism, but seeks to conjoin the cognitive (cognition) involved in defining, representing and using concepts in conceptual spaces; AND the finding that knowledge is invariably situated - that is knowledge has a geography.

References:

Brooker, C., Waugh, A. (2007) Foundations of Nursing Practice: Fundamentals of holistic care, Mosby.
Doherty, C. (2009) A qualitative study of health service reform on nurses’ working lives: Learning from the UK National Health Service (NHS), International Journal of Nursing Studies,46,8,1134-1142.
Jasper, M. (2006) Reflection, Decision-making and Professional Development (Vital Notes for Nurses), Blackwell.
Moon, J.A. (2004) A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning: Theory and Practice, Routledge.

*I can count really ;-)

Monday, July 20, 2009

NHS data breaches: the 'cogeography' of who and where?

Computing this past week featured an item (extract below with link) -

Five more NHS trusts involved in serious data breaches
Written by Tom Young
Computing, 17 Jul 2009

Privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has found five more NHS organisations in breach of the Data Protection Act.
The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust reported the loss of an unencrypted CD initially thought to contain medical treatment details of 20,000 patients from the hospital’s cardiology department.
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Foundation Trust reported the theft of an unencrypted memory stick containing 143 patient details including sensitive medical information.
And Epsom and St Helier University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has been storing hospital records insecurely for nearly two years following data being transferred between hospitals. ...

Straight away reading this I thought of my previous post about cogeography and commented accordingly (which registered twice - oops!). In light of the previous post here's that comment with some additions....
Such events merely (without trivializing) highlight the human capacity to ERR big(gish) time. Is it not possible for tech to help? If info systems through to mobile devices had a sense of where they are and their status as carrying sensitive data recognised through digital IDs - plus additional meta-dynamic data, then 'cogeographic awareness' might result?

I blogged about this with ref to conceptual spaces.

This would be an artificial example and would make it possible for data previously designated as confidential, sensitive, - HOT data if you will - to self-destruct, 'e-vaporate' if it found itself beyond a given combined virtual or physical environment be that hospital, Trust boundary, SHA, or National border...? This capability already exists no doubt in the security services (although sometimes you wonder) or as suggested in the realms of 'MI' and '007'.

Cogeographic or (cogneographic) may be a neologism and seeks to conjoin the cognitive (cognition) involved in defining, representing and using concepts in conceptual spaces; AND the finding that knowledge is invariably situated - that is knowledge has a geography.

Copies of NHS and social care
data could - should - MUST
have a geography too...?

Another comment rightly questioned the ability to put personal data on
CDs and other media in the first place. Amid the emergence
of renewed debate about the future of e-health
records, clinicians may have a professional
duty to demand cogeographic
properties no
less ...?

Image source: http://www.tapintoquality.com/facts/glossary-d.html

Happy Anniversary 20th July!

Friday, July 10, 2009

'cogeographic' or 'cogneographic' - concepts situated and abstract

The term 'cogeographic' materialised while writing a short article for the nursing press on Hodges' model.

Searching SCIENCE DIRECT and similar academic resources I thought I had found the word relating to geography, borders, ethnic groups and geopolitics, but now it seems to have disappeared....?

So I am not 100% sure whether cogeographic is a neologism. In some ways cogneographic better suits my purpose. That Matrix associated addition is a rather bizarre coincidence given the word's status and so with that I should explain how my lexical arrival here came about. ...

I was focusing on two fundamental claims in Hodges' model. Namely:

  • The model is situated;
  • The model assumes that concepts can be located within its knowledge domains.
For me, cogeographic (cogneographic) conjoins the cognitive (cognition) involved in defining, representing and using concepts in conceptual spaces; AND the finding that knowledge is invariably situated - that is knowledge has a geography.

Philo and Pickstone (2009) highlight the work of Haraway:
No knowledge, however ‘scientific’ or prestigious, can ever truly come from nowhere; it can not but originate somewhere, being thoroughly situated, in Donna Haraway’s (1991) valuable terminology; and it commonly bears marks of that origin - situation wherever it might then travel. p.651.
This combination of physical and mental (abstract) location then supports the use of a metric or measure. I suppose what I am thinking about is GIS for concepts - which in turn is the semantic web?

Should I locate any sources I will update this post, or if you can direct me to any please let me know: h2cmng at yahoo.co.uk

Reference:

Philo, C., Pickstone, J. (2009). Unpromising configurations: Towards local historical geographies of psychiatry, Health & Place, 15, 3, 649-656.