Vernacular legibility in counter-mapping: Assembling the geo-body of an indigenous socio-territorial movement in Honduras

Abstract

Critical cartography has called attention to the ways in which resistance and governmentality intersect in counter-mapping projects aimed at supporting Indigenous communities in their land claims. Mapping responds to the communities’ intentions of becoming legible to achieve legal recognition, but it also facilitates their insertion into a grid of intelligibility. Less understood is the role that mapping can have on transforming internal organizational dynamics and how this restructuring may alter their capacity to act as socio-territorial movements. Drawing on a case study in Honduras, this paper seeks to analyze the legacies of counter-mapping through the lens of organizational theory. This analysis involves tracing organizational practices before and after a mapping intervention. Applying this organizational analysis in Honduras shows that cartography contributed to the formation of a geo-body that enabled the standardization of political representation, bringing more political intelligibility between the leaders and constituents of the Miskitu socio-territorial movement. This cartographically enabled standardization is referred to as vernacular legibility because it repurposes technologies of governance to facilitate the formalization of community politics. Vernacular legibility shows how organizational analysis combined with critical cartography advances our understanding of different pathways in the formation of socio-territorial movements.