Editorial-This Is Not an Atlas

Abstract

This chapter introduces the basic idea of »This Is Not an Atlas« and its history. It explains why the publication starts with a love-hate relation to maps and atlases. It also shows how critical cartography can be a starting point for both, criticizing the power of maps as well as actively engaging in mapping and making critical maps. This chapter positions the atlas in relation to activism, art and academia and sketches out the other chapters one by one. It proposes how maps and mapping can be seen and used as tools for action, to tie networks, to create political pressure or to create visibility for marginalized groups. Maps are thus instruments to criticize, educate, show spatial subjectivities and support self-reflection.

From Making Automated Decision Making Visible to Mapping the Unknowable Human: Counter-Mapping Automated Decision Making in Social Services in Australia

“…Mapping is a deeply political act. Halder and Michel (2019) explain, in This Is Not an Atlas, that "maps articulate statements that are shaped by social relations, discourses and practices, but these statements also influence them in turn" (p. 12). The act of mapping is to render a preferred representation of the world, and through this process constitute future relationships between people, culture, space and resources.…”

“…The act of mapping is to render a preferred representation of the world, and through this process constitute future relationships between people, culture, space and resources. To understand this process, critical cartographers scrutinize maps in various ways-methodologically and theoretically-using semiotics, discourse analysis, and deconstructivism (Halder and Michel, 2019;Haley, 1989;Wood, 1992).…”

“…However, the act of mapping is inherently political. Through the act of carving up the landscape with cartographic lines, and through the presumption to name it, flow historical, cultural, economic and political power inequalities and devastating colonial oppression (Halder and Michel, 2019). Categorizing the landscape seems like an abstract act, but it has very real impact on those whose alternative understandings of the landscape are not represented.…”

“Counterstory Mapping Our City”: Teachers Reckoning with Latinx Students’ Knowledges, Cultures, and Communities

“…For Mignolo, telling stories against and beyond the abstraction and simplification of colonial knowledge is a practice of decolonial thinking. For example, Halder and Michel's (2019) edited collection, This is not an Atlas, highlights maps from around the world as tools to counter cartography. Maps of anti-eviction struggles in San Francisco or of community defense of the commons in Mexico visualize resistance and other ways of seeing and understanding place.…”

A community farm maps back! Disputes over public urban farmland in Calgary, Alberta

“…To be sure, several other terms have circulated that parallel the conceptual and analytical intentions of Peluso's counter-mapping. Examples include 'mapping back' (Halder & Michel, 2018), counter-hegemonic mapping , subversive cartography (Lin, 2013), protest maps (Wood et al, 2010), insurgent cartographies (Sletto, 2012), and others. 5.…”