As the previous chapter illustrated in a negative fashion, place is a fundamental concept to individuals' understanding of themselves, both personally and interpersonally. Place is not a neutral category: it is a historical and cultural one, and by figuring place we figure ourselves. The link between place and self is a complex one. Some see place as essentially fictive (in much the same way as the self is seen as fictive). Nevertheless, it is true that, whilst we ‘make’ our space imaginatively, we are not free to make it wholly as we like. There are not only cultural and historical forces forming the imagination of space, but also physical ones. This is not to say that there is an empirical ‘real’ place beyond culture or the gaze of the individual, but that different landscapes, as well as different cultures and historical narratives, produce different senses of place. That is merely to say, we cannot imagine place by an act of will alone: the physical differences of one place over another affect how place is imagined.