The aim of this paper is to discuss the issue of space in the Brazilian social imagination. My working hypothesis is that the spatial images contained in some of the reflections by "interpreters of Brazil", like the Amazonian writings of Euclides da Cunha and the incipient comparative sociology of Vicente Licínio Cardoso, are not related to an essentialist search for a fixed cultural identity, but to a vision of a national civilizing process that highlights the pragmatism and openness of this experience. I contend that the "land", as outlined by these figures, approaches Brazilian society to other national formations - Russia and America -, thereby shaping a political sociology from the periphery.