Unfolding mapping practices: a new epistemology for cartography

Abstract

In recent years there has been a turn within cartographic theory from a representational to a processual understanding of mapping. Maps have been re-conceptualised as mappings that ceaselessly unfold through contingent, citational, habitual, negotiated, reflexive and playful practices, embedded within relational contexts. In this paper, we explore what this rethinking means for cartographic epistemology, contending that attention needs to be focused on understanding cartography through the lens of practices -how mappings are (re)made in diverse ways (technically, socially, bodily, aesthetically and politically) by people within particular contexts and cultures as solutions to everyday tasks. We detail how these practices can be profitably examined using a suite of methods -genealogies, ethnographies, ethnomethodology, participant observation, observant participation and deconstruction -that are sensitive to capturing and distilling the unfolding and contextual nature of mapping. To illustrate our argument we narrate the unfolding production and consumption of a set of mappings of so-called 'ghost estates' in Ireland, a public geography project that has been covered over 300 times in local, national and international media and that has contributed to Irish public discourse and policy debates.

Narrative Cartography: From Mapping Stories to the Narrative of Maps and Mapping

“…This refocusing on the mapping process has stimulated interest in cartography recently (see for instance Kichin et al, 2013;Rossetto, 2013;Azó car Fernández and Buchroithner, 2014) and is directly connected with the narrative of mapmaking. Kitchin et al (2013) illustrate post-representational cartography in action through the presentation and the analysis of a project that maps 'ghost estates' in Ireland, in which two of the authors were involved. As described in the paper, this cartographic project attracted national media attention and had some political, economical and personal consequences: 'the mappings then took on a new life as the media, State and public remade and reterritorialized the information, putting the mapping to work in diverse ways, generating significant public discourse around 'ghost estates,' their geography, the reasons why they exist, the issues affecting people living on them, their effects on the wider housing market and ensuing fiscal crisis, and what to do about them' (Kitchin et al, 2013, p. 494).…”

A place for Big Data: Close and distant readings of accessions data from the Arnold Arboretum

“…Creating distant readings requires a critical sensibility towards data, including attention to what might be occluded as well as what other vantage points are possible. This approach compliments prior work in geography on the critical studies of landscape representation (Barnes and Duncan, 2013;Cosgrove, 2008), as well as the development of critical practices in mapping (Crampton, 2011;Kitchin et al, 2013).…”

Why ‘Where’ Matters: Exploring the Role of Space in Service-Learning

“…Maps from antiquity end when the space that has been disciplined is charted; instead of definitive claims about what remains of the world, fantastical images of dragons and serpentine sea creatures rest on the margins of space that has been brought under control (e.g., Kitchin et al, 2013). While I was initially drawn to situational mapping as a way to make visible the experiences that the participants wrote and spoke about, it quickly came to feel appropriate given that the experience of service-learning asked students to map new meanings onto communities.…”

“…The spaces/places of service-learning tend to be signified by metaphors which map onto underdevelopment. Lowincome communities become ghettoed spaces (Paperson, 2010) or rural ghosts (Kitchin, Gleeson, & Dodge, 2013); in both metaphors, the spaces of low-income communities are absent in the imagination of outsiders, so that knowledge can be mapped upon the communities served with little concern for the lived onto-epistemologies that already exist in those communities. Gruenewald (2003) further stipulates that experiences of place should be complicated in that students may interact with and experience particular places in different ways.…”