Navigational Mapping Practices: Contexts, Politics, Data

Abstract

Maps communicate meaning to the practices and experiences of navigation in everyday life. This is ever more the case in a world where GPS, geo-spatial and locative mapping technology has become embedded in more devices. And yet such mediations are not neutral. Rather, they are entangled with cultural and political practices, and increasingly with the accumulation of spatial big data. Put together, these elements have an impact on how our experiences and understanding of the world are formed and on how the power of maps is exercised and experienced. This paper draws from an ethnographic study of everyday map use in London to demonstrate how some of these impacts mediate and shape practices of urban navigation. The paper contends that navigational mapping practices are contextual, political and increasingly practices of data collection.