Hello and welcome back to my blog! I am so sorry for not posting for such a long time. Unfortunately, my laptop screen decided to break (seriously I didn’t do anything to break it) before I had finished writing this post. I was so close to being finished, but I had to wait until I could get my hands on a laptop to add some final touches, which is why this is coming so late. I promise it’s worth the read though. Today, I will be discussing the long-awaited section 5 in Pablo Iván Azócar Fernández's dissertation. This section is titled "Critical Cartography in the Context of Post-Modernism", and I have been waiting to bring up this topic in greater detail for quite some time, and the fact that it is paired with postmodernism makes it even more exciting. I don't want to ramble on too long with this introduction, so I am going to jump right into the content. The emergence of critical cartography coincided with the epistemological shift away from positivism and into postmodernism in the 1980s. Additionally, it can be placed in the larger category of postmodern cartography. This form of cartography cannot necessarily be defined by a specific style or perspective but by what it is not. That is, postmodern cartography aims to break away from modern cartography and challenge its practices and ideas. If you know anything about postmodernism in other disciplines, like literature, the same trends can be seen there. The goal of this school of thought was to criticize its predecessors and form novel perspectives. According to Nikolas Huffman, postmodernism can be broken down into four main components that separate it from modernism. These are "postmodern style in architecture, art, and literature; postmodern social theory; the political economic of late capitalism and; poststructural philosophy" (Fernández 85). The most important in the context of cartography are post structural philosophy and postmodern social theory. For more information on the general theories of postmodernism, check out my first blog post regarding the dissertation. However, the postmodern style should also be considered. Like other forms of expression (ie. architecture), postmodernist cartographers challenged the conventional method of producing and interpreting maps. In architecture, this was seen in the shift from "form follows function" to "function follows form". As a result, more creative feats of architecture emerged that previous architects would have never considered due to the “rules” of architecture. The same can be said for cartography. Maps were no longer seen as "mirrors of reality", and the scientific and methodical approach to mapping was questioned. By not attempting to show a perfect reflection of the world, maps became more engaging and thought-provoking, and as a result, people began to realize the bias inherent in cartography. Most importantly, maps were now seen as powerful tools that could reveal social problems and be used to assert dominance over certain groups of people. With this idea, critical cartography arose. Critical cartography aims to introduce social analysis into maps that were created for scientific purposes. These maps, often seen as unbiased, were viewed under a new light, and aspects that were previously left unconsidered became the focal point of research. Essentially, critical cartographers took maps and examined how they demonstrate power relationships in society. A major component of critical cartography is the "production of space". When maps are made, they establish spatial relationships. Locations have names and categories and boundaries that do not exist if you were to walk out in the real world. For instance, state borders do not concretely exist. They are simply imaginary lines created by our ancestors to exert their authority. When looking at this "production of space", critical cartography recognizes the link between geography and political power. That is, maps reside in the realm of politics. For example, all three maps below represent United States in different periods of times (although some were not necessarily established maps at the time). This goes to show how politics and a nation's power influence how maps are made. It should also be noted that the point of critiquing maps is not to invalidate the information they display. Instead, the aim is to understand why the map looks the way it does and to seek possible alternatives to what is displayed. Two goals of critical cartography are to examine the social aspects of maps and to allow access to cartography to a wider range of people, also known as "open-source" cartography. Cartography remained an academic practice for a long time, but critical cartographers have brought this issue to light. They advocate for "undisciplined cartography" that the general public can engage in. This practice has allowed new, intriguing perspectives of space to be portrayed through maps. Denis Wood and John Krygier are two critical cartographers that have studied cartography within a historical context. In their research, the two have found that criticism has always existed in the field of cartography, but it was not formally recognized until critical cartography arose in the 1980s. One example they note is Mercator's map, which is a critique of previous maps made with "Ptolemaic and Conical projections". However, Mercator's projection was later criticized by cartographers producing new styles of mapping the world. Wood and Krygier have also recognized criticism within the field of cartography. Cartographers have often questioned the epistemologies and methodologies in the field. This can be seen in the shift from seeing cartography as an exact, unbiased science to a source of power and deceit. There has also been criticism outside of the field. This comes largely from indigenous communities that have lost traditional territories due to maps made by powerful groups. This is seen in a practice known as "counter-mapping", which gives communities the ability to produce their own maps that "counter" those made by traditional cartographers. I am going to make a whole blog post on this topic, but for now, I'll give you a short example. The indigenous peoples of Brazil were stripped of their territorial claims when Europeans colonized the land. One group, known as the Munduruku, used the process of counter-mapping in order to reclaim their ancestral territory in Brazil and protect it against the threat of dam construction. Olga Paraskevopoulu, Dimitris Charitos and Charalampos Rizopoulos point out several examples of projects that challenge cartography in "“Location-Specific Art Practices the Challenge the Traditional Conception of Mapping”. First, Urban Tapestries was a project conducted in 2002 by Proboscis that combined GIS, mobile devices, and public knowledge of urban areas. The project worked to allow people to convey information related to a specific theme outside of geographic location. This incorporated social aspects of cities into maps and allowed the general public to produce maps and routes. Bio Mapping is a project run by Christian Nold to create emotional maps of different areas. This involved using a device to measure a person's "galvanic skin response (GSR)" in various locations throughout a city. GSR determines the user's emotional levels while in a certain area, and then, a map is created to show the rise and fall of someone's emotions as they see and experience various places. ![]() Both of these projects introduce new elements into cartography that have not traditionally been used. In doing so, a broader understanding of a geographic location is produced that goes beyond a coordinate on a map. If you recall one of my first ever blog posts, “A New Perspective of Cartography”, then you may remember the different forms of cartography that I discussed. These were in no way “traditional”, but they played a similar role as geographic maps. "Map mashups" are another form of cartography that adds a layer of complexity to traditional practices. This style of mapping is often employed when mapping a crisis to display various levels of geographic information. To create these maps, one starts with a "base layer" that is simply showing a geographic location. Then, a "operational layer"is added that is essentially the main idea of a map (something like average income per household). Several "operational layers" can be combined to show complex information regarding a certain area (Esri Press Team) Below is a chart detailing new mapping practices that display critical cartography Another aspect of critical cartography is the view of maps as "social constructions". This means that they are no longer unbiased "mirrors of the world" but actually show information within a social context. In this way, maps can be compared to written works, which contain subtext and underlying motives that can be used as a tool for analysis. John Harley proposed a shift in the "the way of interpreting the nature of cartography." That is, a shift in how we think of how and why maps are made (Harley). If maps can be compared to text, then they can also be "deconstructed" like written work. When examining literature, we often attempt to break it down in order to find a deeper meaning and hidden details in the subtext. Deconstruction coincides with postmodernism in the way the nuances of a text are put into larger consideration than the actual words on the page. In 1989, John Harley developed a strategy for deconstructing maps. Harley took inspiration from Michel Foucault and his idea of "discourse", which Fernández defines as "a system of possibility for knowledge." To be honest, this concept is kind of hard for me to understand and explain, but I will try my best to break it down. Discourse refers to written or spoken knowledge and essentially takes the social context in which "knowledge" is composed into consideration. It determines ways of communicating reality within a social context, so therefore, it constitutes what we define as knowledge. Harley connects "discourse" to "rules" in cartography. Below is a model depicting this idea There are essentially two domains in which the rules of cartography fall: social and scientific. Scientific rules are those concerned with the methods used to create maps—think measurements and symbols. Social rules fall under two classifications: "social order" (hierarchy) and "ethnocentrism". These rules show the relationship between maps and power throughout history and display the cultural aspect of maps. The scientific and social rules are interconnected in maps and play an important role when considering deconstruction. Moreover, in deconstructing a map, cartographers must look beyond the information presented on the surface to find subtleties and reveal metaphors hidden in the cartographic language. When looking at “normal” maps (science-based), the “ scientific facts” displayed can become metaphors . Another component of deconstruction is understanding “rhetoric”. In analyzing a map, it is important to take into account the nature of maps to act as instruments of persuasion. They attempt to communicate information in a persuasive and intriguing manner that words or numbers alone cannot achieve. The rules of cartography and rhetoric demonstrate how maps are a “social construction” rather than purely scientific, as was once the consensus. This change in thinking can be seen as a paradigm shift that facilitated the emergence of critical cartography. To build on this idea, the power of maps should also be considered. If you think back to the age of imperialism when nations were fighting to claim as much land as possible, maps decided who got what territories. With this, the native peoples who had inhabited the land for years were cast aside as if they did not exist, and their claims were essentially erased from the “map”. Furthermore, maps can be used as tools for planning and strategizing, as they offer a different perspective of land that can’t be obtained by the human eye alone. John Harley was a leader in the understanding of the power of maps, and helped to lay a foundation for future researchers. Below is a chart similar to the one included above to display Harley’s ideas of power in cartography. According to Harley, there are two types of power in cartography. External power is what most people would initially think if they were asked to explain the power of maps. This power is “centralised” in the hands of the leaders of a nation or group, which involves exercising power “on cartography” and “with cartography”. “On cartography” refers to the creator's ability to manipulate the image of a map to favor their interests. On the other hand, “with cartography” explains how power can be exerted using maps, such as through a territorial claim.
Conversely, the internal power in cartography is not as obvious. It refers to “the political effects of what cartographers do when they make maps” (Fernández 102). Whenever a cartographer produces a map, power is created, whether that is intentional or unintentional. Furthermore, power is derived from maps. This is largely due to the “cartographic process” that allows the cartographer to display their version of reality. As a result, the world is “normalized”. Here’s a paragraph from the dissertation that does a great job of summarizing this idea: From an epistemological viewpoint, Harley pointed out that, whilst the map is never the reality, it helps to create a different reality. Once embedded in the published text, the lines on the map acquire authority. Thus, maps are authoritarian images, and even without the users being aware of it, a map can reinforce and legitimize the status quo inside of a society. I know that this was a very information-heavy blog post, but I hope you found it as interesting as I did. It’s so intriguing to see how seemingly innocent objects, like maps, can be used to wield so much power. We don’t think about it, but we put so much trust into maps that we would be lost (literally) without them. Think of the last time you were traveling somewhere and didn’t pull out a map of some sort to find your way around. This map was probably filled with borders and names and symbols that are generally looked past. However, I hope that after reading this, you will reconsider the contents of the next map you see. Now, I wanted to give you a glimpse into the future of the blog. I have decided to stop writing about the dissertation because I wanted to expand my blog to cover some more topics. Moving forward, my posts will be shorter and focused on easily understandable topics, as I don’t have an abundance of time to write at the moment. I will try to be consistent, but I can’t make any promises. I hope you come back for my next blog post!
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