Prep for 2nd Meeting (6/18) (and notes on The Power of Maps)

For our 2nd meeting (Wednesday, 6/18, 4-6pm, in Blegen 205), please try to do the following:

1) Read the previous post summarizing the research topics we proposed in the 1st meeting, and reply with any additional topics and any interesting ways of organizing these topics.

2) Think about the four questions raised in the previous post about our audience, purpose, map form and content, and central themes.  Add comments in response to any of these questions (or at least be prepared to discuss them in class).

3) We would like to make part of the 2nd meeting a skill-and-knowledge sharing workshop.  It would be great if you could prepare a short presentation on some skills/knowledges/technologies that you think are relevant for the project (e.g., where to find research data on the U, where to find maps, how to use GIS, etc.).

4) Explore the maps linked here, especially UNC’s disOrientation Guide and Mapping Comic Book.

5) If you haven’t already, please read “Maps Work by Serving Interests” – Ch. 1 of Denis Wood’s The Power of Maps.  For a more basic introduction to mapping, you can read these lectures from J.B. Krygier: “Maps and Human Understanding” and “Cartographic Maps”.  Since only a few of us read the Wood chapter, we won’t officially assign any additional reading for this Wednesday, so that the whole class can try to get on the same page.  Feel free to read some of the other articles, such as “An Introduction to Critical Cartography,” which gives theoretical and historical background.  Also, for those of you who have some experience with cartography and GIS, please recommend to the class any articles, books, or websites that you think would be helpful (either by email or commenting here).

The Power of Maps by Denis Wood — The following are my notes on some of the key ideas from the introduction and Ch.1, “Maps work by serving interests”…(*Please feel free to continue our discussion from class by adding comments here with your reflections on this book and any related ideas!)

– “Maps represent” – They transform whatever-is-not-here-present-to-our-senses-now (the past and present, the invisible, the vast, the complex) into something that appears real to us.  Maps gain their power from this reality-constructing ability.

– “Maps work by serving interests” – The people who make the map are guided by certain interests in selecting what to show and to what to leave off.

– “Naturalization of the map” – Masking of the interests embodied in the map – making it appear as if the mapmakers were disinterested.  Mapmakers often unintentionally reproduce the status quo of culture and society, which benefits the conservative forces who have an interest in that status quo.  Sometimes mapmakers mask that they are working for transformative forces who seek to promote particular interests of a class, industry, region, etc..  It is necessary for them to mask this interest if they want the map to be taken as an accurate representation of reality, particularly by an audience who does not subscribe to their interests. 

– Wood’s thesis: when we see maps as historically contingent sign systems that serve interests, then we can use them ourselves as powerful tools to make our own statements about the world.

– “Maps construct – not reproduce – the world” – Rather than seeing the map as a window on the world, seeing how maps construct our ways of seeing the world, we can open the things represented by maps to discussion and debate. By seeing the lines on a map as socially constructed (e.g., property lines, borders, flood lines), we can become aware of how the map serves to create these objects by guiding people’s actions in the world such that they treat those objects as real (e.g., respecting the laws and customs associated with property lines, borders, and flood lines).  We can then raise questions about the interests behind the creation of these objects – do we agree with the purposes they serve? – should we include them on our own maps?

– “Maps link the territory with what comes with it” – with the past and future – with systems of codes, laws, boundaries, routes – with natural phenomena (e.g., precipitation, geography, temperature) – with sociological data (e.g., property values, crime rates, economic inequalities).  

– Maps do this linking at different scales – they construct how we link certain systems, signs, features with parts of the world at different scales of local/global, macro/micro, etc..  (Lesley made an interesting point about scale in class: the immediate zooming between local and global scales, which is enabled by new mapping technologies like google maps, can help people problematize the usual associations that are linked with territories on traditional maps.  (For example, zooming in and out rapidly, we can destabilize our belief in the bounded entity of a country or city (or university), and then we can be more open to reconnecting the territory with data that highlights the unequal global and local flows of resources that were hidden in the official maps.)

– “Maps enable our living” – Different maps connect us to the territories they represent and what comes with them in different ways (e.g., compare property maps with general reference maps).  They incorporate actions carried out in the past (the work of the mapmaker) into our present modes of living.  It takes a lot of labor to link up the knowledge we have constructed in our past with our present living.