theoretical developments in map studies

2009

Progress in Human Geography, 2007

Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 2015

We never met Brian Harley, nor heard him speak, but his ideas deeply influenced our thinking, writing, and teaching about maps and mapping. His argument that maps function as social texts has a powerful force: after all, maps clearly do much more than simply store spatial data and communicate information. Harley's writing, along with work by Denis Wood, John Pickles, and Matthew Edney, opened up many routes for map studies beyond the technical, the cognitive, and applied functionalism. This body of scholarship, which we now recognize as ''critical cartography,'' was important as it helped to integrate the map as a significant object of inquiry back into the intellectual mainstream of the social sciences and humanities.

Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 2015

This special issue marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of J.B. Harley's “Deconstructing the Map” (1989), which has had a major influence in the fields of critical cartography, the history of cartography, and human geography more generally. Over the last quarter century, this essay and related works have also been widely cited by scholars from a broad range of disciplines across the social sciences and humanities, serving as a key reference for those seeking to theorize the spatial politics of maps and mapping. Through such citational practices, “Deconstructing the Map” has acquired a canonical status as one of the classics of critical cartographic theory, yet the limitations of its theoretical and methodological analyses are widely acknowledged even by Harley's strongest supporters. The contributors to this special issue discuss their own critical engagements with this foundational text as well as the extent to which Harley's work still resonates with c...

Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 1992

is well known to cartographers and historians of cartography for his incisive commentary on their as sumptions and practices. In The Power of Maps, a pub lication which accompanies his 1992-93 exhibition of the same name at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, Wood draws together previously published articles into a statement of his own theoretical posidon. Despite occa sional cross-referencing, each chapter remains a separate essay, this separateness reinforced by die reiteration of bib liographical information in the notes and the lack of a general list of sources. Two themes pervade the collection: first, maps are not simply mirrors of nature but "social constructions," and second, maps demonstrate more than spatial relationships-they are historical transcripts, records not only of past struggles for territorial possession but also of increasingly sophisticated perspective and signage. Given die intensity of Wood's disappointment on reading die Harley/Wood ward History of Cartography,' we could be justified in hoping that in his own volume there would be more sys tematic thought, a more unified, clearly defined, even in novative response to the questions he has challenged otiiers to answer. Seeing maps as "social constructions" is not new, as Wood himself acknowledges. Wood dedicates his book to Brian Harley and quotes several times from Harley's essays-indeed, one of these quotations sums up Wood's ap proach in the first four and last of seven chapters: Both in the selectivity of their content and in their signs and styles of representation, maps are a way of conceiving, articu lating and structuring the human world which is biased towards,

Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 2015

2013

Cartographers, geographers, and cultural historians acknowledge that existing frameworks for creating and understanding relationships through the map began to change in the mid-twentieth century. Terms like zoning, boundary condition, and master plan no longer adequately describe, catalog, or represent what are now understood as complex, culturally specific contexts and information networks. Additionally, new forms of mapping and new tools for representation allow faster and more data-intensive maps to be assembled. When used as an applied research method in design, mapping reveals a complex ofrelationships between representation and thinking, technology, culture, and aesthetic practices. With the aim of developing more effective ways to employ mapping, I offer a mapping course to students across disciplines that looks at maps in relation to the cartographic histories associated with different forms of themap and the relationship of these maps to an idea or place. This paper shares ...