An introduction to Critical Cartography (Crampton and Krygier 2006)
Introduction: Cartography Undisciplined
Cartography slipping from the control of powerful elites, map houses, the state, anyone can make a map with a home computer and internet. Cartography undergoing a technological transition
A social theoretical critique- situates maps in specific relations of power, not neutral, a map is a set of power-knowledge claims
Cartography is operating freed from the confines of the academic and opened up to the people. The critique is political by nature and part of a longer cartographic critique.
What is critique? A critical politics of truth
project of finding fault, examining the assumptions of a field of knowledge, to suggest alternatives to categories of knowledge we use. To show how categories came into being and other possibilities. Kant descibes critical philosophy where people constantly and restlessly strive to know and challenge authority.
Modern emphasis on critique owes a substantial amount to Frankfurt school's development on critical theory- providing an emancipatory philosophy which could challenge existing power structures.
Foucault reflected on Kant's critical philosophy, critique is not about accumulating a body of knowledge, more an attitude, an ethos, a philosophy of seeking to go beyond limits. For Foucault, power is about the politics of knowledge, power can produce repressive subjects, but also free ones
Overall critique is a politics of knowledge, examining the grounds of our decision making knowledge's, second examines the relationship between power and knowledge from historical perspective, then resists, challenges and sometimes overthrows our category of thought. The truth of knowledge is established under conditions that have a lot to do with power
The Cartographic Critique: Some Examples
A rich transdisciplinary field. Critical cartography has targeted such disciplinary knowledge in two developments, one theoretical and one in practice.
Theoretical critiques of cartography- assumes that maps make reality as much as they represent it, mapping as the production of space, geography, place and territory,as well as the political identities of those who make up these spaces. Increasing attention- how maps inscribe power and support the dominant political structures. Developed during 1980s and early 90s in opposition to post-war epistemologies of mapping
Harley 1990- no understanding of mapping was complete with ideas of power, ideology and surveillance. Sought to situate maps as social documents that needed to be udnerstood in their historical contexts
Pickles 1991- attacked GIS as a return to technocratic positivism, responses accused social theorists of ignoring tremendous insights possible with GIS. Few real contributions of of geography beyond the discipline.
Critical mapping practices
What does alternative mappings mean in practice? map experimentation by the artistic community, maps create a sense of geographical meaning
Artist have looked at how maps are political and how mapping can be a political act- the situationists project of political resistance- "subversive cartographies" creating different arrangements of space
Some turned the tools of mass distribution, bringing mapping technologies to the people more directly, creating a people's cartography, e.g. map hacking- exploiting open-source mapping applications like Application Programme Interfaces
They were not developed from disciplines of cartography or GIS- by programmers intrigued by mapping potential to deliver meaningful information, we live in a mobile and everyday world, these preformative mapping capabilities are intriguing. However current digital divide as open sourcing is only effective with those who have a powerful PC and access to the internet, different social groups suffer lag- the social relevance critique
Critical Cartography in Historical Perspective
Only at this time of late 80s have experts begun to organise knowledge about maps into a coherent body of knowledge with scientific aspirations, into a scientific discipline of cartography. Substantive relations between maps as methods and diverse concepts and theories in geography
Spatial knowledge in a discipline was ordered and the world made knowable through specific calculations of space for reasons of government and management . Most influential idea was that space could be conceptualised into points, lines, areas and surfaces- a spatial data model
They jearned for academic segregation, big argument as whether or not it is within the field of geography
Anxieties about the quality of maps available and problems in training new cartographers following ww2 driving force behind the flourishing of Angle-American cartography of 1950s. Robison's work and great achievement was that he included the map user in the equasion to improve the efficiency and functionality of maps as communication devices, he wanted to ensure map design was clear, efficient and effective
1950s to 70s- critical cartography came under attack and critiqued for suppression of the political in cartography, maps are part of the imperialist or post-colonial project
Harvey 1969- use of a map poses a number of problems concerning influence and control, these methodological issues need discussion
Cartography adopted an internalist technological perspective, eschewing engagement with larger societal and political issues- emergence of Robinsonian cartography- reaction to the political use of maps by the Nazis and its allies.
Where Robinson emphasized research on how maps are understood by users, early twentieth century cartography focused on how maps could be applied to solve socio-political problems. These mapping efforts were “political” without explicitly articulating a politics—that is, map discourse was political economic discourse
Jefferson argues population maps were deficient as they assumed all places existed naturally prior to the act of mapping, a truer sense of place was created by the act of mapping itself
Conclusion: Mapping Possibilities
Mainstream academic cartographers moved beyond some of the key tenets of Robinsonian cartography, mapping is no longer in the hands of the experts and the scientific method of hypothesis testing and pattern confirmation was no longer adequate. Instead maps and GIS are used in exploratory methods of data mining and pattern-seeking
Robinson’s establishment of modern (post-war) cartography on a-political, empirical and scientific grounds, segregated from context, has been a target of critique from its beginnings. Some critiques were ends in themselves; other
critiques were an impetus for the exploration of cartographies beyond the conception offered by academic cartographers. Contemporary critical cartography is situated in this long critical tradition, is important for the intellectual history of cartography, and is a source of ideas and avenues for work in contemporary mapping.
The practice of a cartographer is immediately political, the critical approach is an ethos and a practice, a Kantasian process of questioning
On the one hand a theoretical enquiry which seeks to examine the social relevance of mapping, its ethics and power relations, and on the other hand, the development of
open-source and pervasive mapping capabilities.