The Power of Mapping: Considering Discrepancies of Polish Cadastral Mapping

Abstract

In his seminal work on cartography, Brian Harley develops insights and raises questions about the power of maps. This article takes up these insights and questions through an anti-essentialist reading of Foucault's later thinking merged with concepts from grounded theory. The research examines the interrelated economic, strategic, legal, and technical aspects of mapping activities that use and create cadastral (property) maps. Using multiple scales, I analyze cadastral mapping activities through decomposition into interactions, boundary objects, and contextual factors to establish how empowerment and limitation take place. The examples come from fieldwork in Poland that explores cadastral mapping discrepancies. Following the demise of socialist forms of government and property in 1989, studies from the 1990s found differences (by area) between officially mapped ownership and actual property usage of up to 40 percent in rural areas. Although most Polish cadastral maps from rural areas were then, and still are, officially accepted as accurate, many remain functionally unusable. Further, the high level of discrepancies failed, and still fails, to systematically disrupt cadastral mapping, farming, and other economic activities. Considering this background, the article explores the processes of making property rights and the limits of state-centric constructions of territory. Reflecting the increased use of geographic information systems in cadastral mapping and the controls of Common Agricultural Policy disbursements, the article also analyzes different meanings of accuracy and the limits of cadastral mapping's calculative power.