Abstract
This paper provides an introduction to the Humanities Special Issue on “Deep Mapping”. It sets out the rationale for the collection and explores the broad-ranging nature of perspectives and practices that fall within the “undisciplined” interdisciplinary domain of spatial humanities. Sketching a cross-current of ideas that have begun to coalesce around the concept of “deep mapping”, the paper argues that rather than attempting to outline a set of defining characteristics and “deep” cartographic features, a more instructive approach is to pay closer attention to the multivalent ways deep mapping is performatively put to work. Casting a critical and reflexive gaze over the developing discourse of deep mapping, it is argued that what deep mapping “is” cannot be reduced to the otherwise a-spatial and a-temporal fixity of the “deep map”. In this respect, as an undisciplined survey of this increasing expansive field of study and practice, the paper explores the ways in which deep mapping can engage broader discussion around questions of spatial anthropology.
Highlights
Beyond offering what is at best a rather generic sketching of a disciplinary or interdisciplinary field of research in which concerns with “space” and “place” are understood to be in some way prominent, spatial humanities engages and incites curiosity precisely on account of what it does not succeed in detailing with any great precision
For deep mapping to acquire traction and resonance beyond an otherwise vague referencing to humanistic and qualitative approaches to the cartography of place—whether encompassing literary and cinematic geographies [14,15,16,17], psychogeography [18], site-specific art [19], popular music geographies and “musicscapes” [20,21], landscape and performance [8,22], spatial history [23], or whatever else we might wish to find room for in the big tent that is spatial humanities scholarship— the possibilities offered by digital cultures and technologies certainly warrant attention
As an exemplar of a geo-literary thick description, PrairyErth can be considered a “deep map” might we not correspondingly draw the conclusion that a writer could be considered a deep cartographer on literary terms alone?
Summary
Deep maps and deep mapping offer rich pickings in this respect in that they highlight the ways in which qualitative and humanistic forays into the representation and practice of space and place are multi-faceted, open-ended and—perhaps more contentiously—irreducible to formal and programmatic design.
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