Maps Narratives and Trails: Performativity, Hodology and Distributed Knowledges in Complex Adaptive Systems – an Approach to Emergent Mapping

Abstract

If maps are conceived as representations of reality or as spatially referenced data assemblages, a dilemma is raised by the nature of Indigenous knowledge traditions and multiple ontologies. How can differing knowledge traditions, differing ways of mapping be enabled to work together without subsumption into one common or universal ontology? The paper explores one way of handling this dilemma by reconceiving mapping and knowing performatively and hodologically. It is argued that one way in which differing knowledge traditions can interact and be mutually interrogated is by creating a database structured as distributed knowledge and emulating a complex adaptive system. Through focusing on the encounters, tensions and cooperations between traditions and utilising the concept of cognitive trails‐ the creation of knowledge by movement through the natural and intellectual environment – the socially distributed performative dimensions of differing modes of spatially organised knowledges can then be held in a dialogical tension that enables emergent mapping.

Sami Place Names and Maps: Transmitting Knowledge of a Cultural Landscape in Contemporary Contexts

“…As many interviewees stressed, narratives, or storytelling, and particularly the accounts of journeys, play a major role in the discourse of everyday life. When speaking about the places they have traveled to or will travel to, the Sami use a mental representation of mapping, place names being at the core of this noninscribed, or "performative," mapping (Rundstrom, 1995;Ingold, 2000;Turnbull, 2007). As one interviewee expressed it, "in the past, the name was the map" (a woman, Jåhkågasska community).…”

“…Following the movement of "counter-mapping" engaged by indigenous peoples of Canada in the 1960s, some authors have undertaken to think of new ways of inscribed mapping that can bind the western scientific tradition of mapping to indigenous ontologies (Turnbull, 2007), arguing for a decolonization of cartographic traditions (Smith, 2002;Johnson et al, 2006;Hirt, 2012). The rise and democratization of digital tools offer new possibilities for achieving this objective.…”

Living a Long Way from Home: Communicating Land-related Knowledge in Dispersed Indigenous Communities, an Alternative Approach

“…Scholars have stressed the importance of the link between knowledge and place, and emphasized how peoples' movement in their landscapes is a fundamental component in the processes of knowledge production (Tilley, 1994;Basso, 1996;Ingold, 2000: 132-151;Ingold & Kurttila, 2000;Tuan, 2001;Agrawal, 2002;Nergård, 2006;Jones, 2007;Turnbull, 2007;Ingold, 2011). Ingold (2000) emphasizes that cultural knowledge and identity are closely linked to "living in the land", which explicitly denotes an ongoing engagement with the land by those who inhabit it.…”

Futures for indigenous knowledges

“…In practicing and making their knowledges of the world, people make themselves, the societies and the spaces they inhabit. In moving and acting they perform their knowledge spaces, they create trails, they 'know as they go' through the cognitive and physical landscape [18].…”