Spatial assumptions, mostly taken for granted in mediated and face-to-face language use, both represent and constitute social reality. How, though, do their hidden logics work in detail? What are their respective imaginative effects and functions? And, in view of their involvement in discourses of discrimination, are they dispensable? By using the press coverage of the German reunification as a case study, I discuss the social embeddedness and maintenance of fairly traditional spatial concepts in general, and the Euclidean ‘container concept’ in particular on a theoretical level. In everyday social practice, it is argued, these concepts have both constraining and enabling implications. Their constitutive dimension, however, is often neglected in recent critical discourse animated by ‘new’ spatial imaginations such as flows, networks, folds, or rhizomes. In this respect, I argue that everyday ‘containerization’ surely (over)simplifies contingency and complexity. Yet, the ‘closed spaces’ still remain reasonable and to a certain extent, indispensable tools for making the world intelligible by identifying, organizing, and structuring complex phenomena. Hence, instead of only searching for new and ‘more adequate’ spatial representations, the everyday use of the ‘old’ ones should also remain a subject of thorough sociogeographic inquiry.

: According to the theory of ‘significative regionalisation’ (Werlen), territorial entities may be understood as products of symbolic practices. However, the assumption that regions are not only made but also continuously performed in acts of communication effects the character of substantial research into ostensible and latent spatial imaginations apparent in communication processes. In this article, the reactivation of Mitteldeutschland (literally the ‘centre of Germany’) in a televisionseries about the region's history is the empirical starting point for conceptualizing contemporary processes of symbolic regionalization. The approach taken covers the entire communication chain from the editorial process to the film material up to everyday language use of the programs target group. Three empirical studies with specific methods of research (hermeneutics, argumentation analysis and semi‐structured interviews) illustrate this interlinked process. As an analytical tool, a fundamental distinction between implicit ‘common places’ of spatial representation and more obvious and thus negotiable explicit features of spatial signification is suggested. The analysis elucidates that — even under conditions of contemporary globalization — the massmedia reproduce traditional practices of spatial representation, as, for instance, a persistent and taken‐for‐granted use of container images indicates. Regarding the explicit features, however, the medias' influence seems to be quite low. Mitteldeutschland's geography, as proposed by the television program, is questioned and negotiated in everyday symbolic practice. Up until now, the region thus remains continuously ‘under construction’.

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