Critical cartography

Critical Cartography is a set of new mapping practices and theoretical critique grounded in critical theory. It differs from academic cartography in that it links geographic knowledge with political power.

Critical cartographers do not aim to invalidate maps. Instead the critique is careful analysis of maps identifying attributes of the maps that are taken for granted. The eventual hope is to better understand the maps and gain more knowledge.

Critical cartography is the idea that maps are not neutral. They reflect and perpetuate relations of power. And these reflections are usually in the interest of dominant groups. Maps project our desires onto the landscape, they can map our hopes for the future, what we desire to see and that which we wish to ignore. The process of mapping can bring new ways of being and relating into the world.

Critical cartography developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s in opposition to the dominant tradition of mapping as a progressive and neutral reflection of the environment . Since ancient historical times, maps have been produced to benefit the visions of the ruling class.  Advocates of critical cartography aimed to reveal the “‘hidden agendas of cartography’ as tools of socio-spatial power”. Critical cartographers put forward new mapping practices, called Counter-mapping, that challenge formal maps of the state. Counter-mapping mostly refers to maps made by indigenous cartographers but can include maps from other sources as well. Indigenous cartographers engage in counter-mapping in an attempt to represent their land to reduce threats posed by external forces. Counter-maps are especially important because they demonstrate community claims for rights over land. The aim of Critical Cartography is to reduce the gap between a more technically oriented map design and a more theoretical analysis of power in society.

Activists have always used maps as a way of resistance. A series of maps from the 1960s to 2010 demonstrate various ways maps have been used as a tool of defiance . Organizations such as Counter-Cartographies Collective (USA), Iconoclasistas (Argentina), and Bureau d’Etudes (France) work to change the way people think about maps and power.

Since the 1991 death of John Brian Harley, formerly a professor in Geography at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, the field of cartography has flourished with theories and writing that identify maps as social issues and expressions of power and knowledge. Leading figures that have picked up where Harley left off include Denis Cosgrove, Denis Wood, Jeremy Crampton, John Krygier, and Kevin St. Martin. Maps are now viewed as potential sites of power and knowledge. They are sources of knowledge of geography, places and people.

...
Wikipedia