Critical Cartography Research Articles

Sovereignty cubed: The Arctic as a territorial and ontological volume

State sovereignty over space has traditionally been viewed as confined to a bounded land area. However, scholarship in critical cartography, political, and social theory shows this understanding to be flawed. This perspective not only limits understandings of sovereignty density, but also weakens our understanding of the limits of the state. This is particularly evident in the Arctic, where sovereignty discourse often fails to address the complexities of space in connection with authority and legitimacy for decision-making in the region. This article first critically examines Arctic sovereignty, challenging the notion of sovereignty as merely a horizontal area with land or sea boundaries. Instead, it argues that Arctic geopolitics and governance are better understood when sovereignty is considered as a scalar concept encompassing a territorial volume. Second, it contextualises the processes involved in the legitimisation of sovereignty and governance practices across the Arctic, framing this as ontological sovereignty. The article contends that Arctic sovereignty and governance are more comprehensively understood by shifting from a strictly material perspective to an ontological framing, which encompasses control over the nature and existence of Arctic spaces, with implications for future development and understandings of Arctic governance.

Mapping for connection, a life beyond mapping for control: lessons from ‘mapping-as-performance’ with Empatheatre in South Africa

This paper critically examines the intersections of Science, colonialism, and cartography in shaping perceptions of the ocean and its human-nature relationships. Drawing on Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies (PCSTS) and Decolonial Theory, it scrutinizes historical mapping practices, revealing how they perpetuated ontological hierarchies and controlled narratives of the ocean. Through archival research spanning from the Revolution to colonial exploration, the paper exposes how maps framed the ocean as a controllable entity, obscuring socio-cultural dimensions of biodiversity. Focusing on a case study in Northern Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, the authors explore an Empatheatre mapping process, that challenges Western ontologies and promotes counter-hegemonic cartographic practices. Situating this within critical cartography and PCSTS literature, the paper reveals how colonial projects molded perceptions of oceanic space and influenced environmental governance. In the South African context, the ocean is haunted by a violent history of racial exclusion and ecological exploitation. Initiatives like Operation Phakisa’s Blue Economy plan underscore the tension between economic growth and ecological sustainability, leading to rapid coastal developments. Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) emerges as a tool to reconcile these interests, yet its implementation raises questions about inclusivity and community participation. Introducing the Empatheatre method, characterized by a ‘Call and Response’ approach, the paper invites local communities to co-create maps reflecting their concerns and relationships with the ocean. Through attentive listening and collaborative storytelling, Empatheatre challenges traditional consultation methods, prioritizing meaningful engagement and collective meaning-making. Mapping in this context is not merely a static representation but a dynamic process of collective thinking and relationality. By foregrounding the social, cultural, and ecological context, Empatheatre’s approach redefines the mapmaker-map relationship and empowers communities as active agents in shaping their narratives. The transformative potential of Empatheatre lies in its ability to shift power dynamics and foster empathy between diverse stakeholders. Through performative storytelling and visual representations, Empatheatre creates space for marginalized voices and alternative modes of knowledge transmission. In conclusion, this paper advocates for a decolonial approach to oceanic cartographies that acknowledges diverse ontologies and fosters inclusive governance structures.

Mapping Energy Geopolitics in Europe: Journalistic Cartography and Energy Securitisation After the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

ABSTRACT The 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered measures in the European Union to reduce its energy interdependencies with Russia. In this paper, we delve into the role of journalistic cartography as places of visual securitisation producing the context which enabled these decisions. Crossing critical security studies with critical geopolitics and critical cartography, our hypothesis is that journalistic cartography solidifies certain discourses over energy geopolitics through the performance of maps dividing the world between places endangered and places exporting danger. Our analysis conducted on 206 maps leads to three main results. Firstly, it demonstrates the existence of common narratives across countries, thus nuancing previous findings concerning the spatial heterogeneity of energy security discourses. Secondly, these imaginaries rely on five mapping genres that perform spatial categorisation between insecurity from outside/security from inside. Thirdly, these genres sustain a neorealist interpretation of energy interdependencies, which sees trade as a zero-sum game and exports as coercive political tools, while silencing other approaches.

Visualizing biodiversity on maps

Abstract Maps play a central role in the transfer of knowledge for biodiversity conservation. However, their production and reception contexts have not been sufficiently investigated so far. While critical cartography has demonstrated that maps are not objective representations of nature but are influenced by social conventions, these insights have not been fully reflected in ecological mapping practice. This paper draws on critical map theory and expands it with a critical evaluation of map visualization. By analyzing the design of biodiversity maps, our study demonstrates that the way biodiversity is visualized in maps does not adequately reflect the dynamics and interdependencies of natural systems, nor does it adequately reflect the species-specific needs. It is argued that design-led research provides relevant knowledge about evaluating maps in terms of their functionality as communication tools. This is of central importance if we wish to further develop ecological cartography and make it practicable and effective in its field of application.

El insilio: cierta deuda de la crítica literaria en América Latina

Within the broad scope of themes and aesthetic currents that Latin American literature has produced, displacement in its multiple faces - migration, exile, diaspora - has played a prominent role. However, it is important to note that there are aesthetic projects built on a non-geographic type of human displacement, the insile, which represents one of the great gaps in Latin American literary historiography. In this sense, the aim of this analysis is to compile, through a non-exhaustive bibliographical review, a series of theoretical reflections that can serve as a preliminary systematization on the theme of insile. This compilation will be carried out from the analysis of certain critical and literary works, aiming to propose a reconfiguration of the critical cartography of Latin American literature. For this purpose, the corpus of the work is composed of critical texts by authors such as Jacques Derrida, Elena Palmero González and Eduardo Lalo, in addition to the novel Los Vigilantes (1994), by Chilean writer Diamela Eltit (1949).

A critical cartography: mapping chapters, networks, and relationships through regional organization

ABSTRACT The Association for Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) was created, in part, to address underrepresentation in the study and management of heritage. However, achieving genuinely inclusive representation within global heritage conversations remains elusive, exacerbated by entrenched power dynamics and the dominance of Western epistemologies. Here, we discuss ACHS’s efforts to foster a more democratic, inclusive discourse through its organizational structure and international collaborations. As we argue here, although significant strides towards diversifying heritage discourse are evidenced by the creation of chapters and networks aimed at amplifying underrepresented voices, challenges persist in ensuring equitable participation. We discuss the importance of strategic regionalization and language inclusivity in advancing a platform that reflects the diversity of global heritage perspectives.

Crossing Boundaries: The Ethics of AI and Geographic Information Technologies

Over the past two decades, there has been increasing research on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and geographic information technologies for monitoring and mapping varying phenomena on the Earth’s surface. At the same time, there has been growing attention given to the ethical challenges that these technologies present (both individually and collectively in fields such as critical cartography, ethics of AI and GeoAI). This attention has produced a growing number of critical commentaries and articles as well as guidelines (by academic, governmental, and private institutions) that have been drafted to raise these ethical challenges and suggest potential solutions. This paper presents a review of 16 ethical guidelines of AI and 8 guidelines of geographic information technologies, analysing how these guidelines define and employ a number of ethical values and principles (e.g., autonomy, bias, privacy, and consent)One of the key findings from this review is the asymmetrical mentioning of certain values and principles within the guidelines. The AI guidelines make very clear the potential of AI to negatively impact social and environmental justice, autonomy, fairness and dignity, while far less attention is given to these impacts in the geographic information guidelines. This points to a need for the geo-information guidelines to be more attentive to the role geographic information can play in disempowering individuals and groups.

“If Sweden is a province, what are we?” Map-making and man-making in Marius Ivaškevičius’s essay series My Scandinavia

This co-written article approaches the influential Lithuanian writer and playwright Marius Ivaškevičius’s essay series My Scandinavia (2004) from two different vantage points reflecting either side of the former ‘Iron Curtain’. Published in the year when Lithuania joined the European Union, the essay series describes the narrator’s travels and symbolic and ironic conquest of Northern Europe in the wake of the border openings following the collapse of the Soviet Union. First, employing the notions of “temporal” and “spatial nodes” (Ringgard & DuBois 2017), the article addresses how the crossings of the Baltic Sea and journeys through Northern Europe depicted in Ivaškevičius’s essays represent an awareness of significant shifts in the unfolding of European history and Europe’s spatial configuration. Second, the article reads My Scandinavia as an example of creative map-making in line with theories of critical cartography. Finally, the article puts the travelling subject in My Scandinavia centre stage, looking at the dialectic ways in which subject and place create each other. Just as Scandinavia has been actively moulding the narrating and, by implication, also the writing subject’s biography, so has he given Scandinavia shape through his discourse, while also idiosyncratically framing Europe’s shifting political and mental geography.

All mixed up in the terrain: The geographic knowledge of mamelucos applied by Jesuits in the cartographic production of Paraguayan Backlands (1746-1753)

Cartographic images made by Jesuits in the 18th century turned out to be transnational and locally mixed cognitive experiences, as these missionary agents of a global institution were forced to establish a collaborative relationship with the multicultural spaces where they settled and undertook their activities. One of the cartographic genres developed by the missionaries, the Paraquariae Provinciae, combined information and geographical knowledge of the mamelucos, a mestizo social type of Amerindian with white Portuguese settler which has been widely acknowledged but poorly elucidated by the historiography making process. The present paper aims to address these issues by applying concepts and methods of critical cartography in order to compare maps built by the Jesuits.

Untangling Infrastructure Networks Through Critical Cartographies: Mapping the Port of Trieste, Italy

This article illustrates how to research complex infrastructure networks using critical cartography. Maps, infographics, and datascapes are employed to study how contemporary flows of goods, people, and money are redefining a specific location. This topic has been widely investigated in science and technology studies; however, it has seldom been addressed by applying visual methods. Cartography, in particular, is generally regarded as a subject of analysis, rather than an investigative tool. Conversely, this contribution discusses the theory and explores critical cartography as a speculative and artistic practice for problematizing the spatialization of policies, financial interests, and trade flows. It adds another level of understanding to the field of inquiry, and can help in developing counternarratives. This method is adopted to investigate the Port of Trieste, Italy, where radical transformations have been driven by international investment and infrastructural programs. Critical cartography can help to unravel this tangle by unveiling the cross-scalar dimension of contemporary global trade and the complex landscape of infrastructural networks.

Constructing Facts on the Map: The 2020 “Vision for Peace Conceptual Map: The State of Israel and a Future State of Palestine”

ABSTRACT Maps have historically always been intertwined with politics and the making of nation-states. Map-making in Israel/Palestine is a particularly powerful example of the politics of maps. This paper draws on critical cartography, Border Studies and Science and Technology Studies to analyze the “Vision for Peace Conceptual Maps” of a future State of Palestine and the State of Israel that were published by the White House in 2020 as part of a proposed peace plan entitled “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People”. The focus is on the visual rhetoric, discursive underpinnings, and historical context of these maps. The paper also draws on qualitative in-depth interviews as well as academic and policy analyzes of the peace plan’s feasibility and potential impact. While the peace plan and its maps have vanished from the political limelight, they will nevertheless have established “facts on the map” that will embody new spatial possibilities that will inevitable shape imagined futures in Israel/Palestine.

The digital turn of marine planning: a global analysis of ocean geoportals

ABSTRACT Recent research highlighted the use and role played by digital technologies supporting marine spatial planning (MSP), especially geoportals. This research seldom considers to study an overview of the role of digital technologies and examines the digitalization of marine governance in planning. Employing a critical cartography framework and assemblage theory, we elaborate on the use of geoportal and public involvement in the digital turn of MSP. We show how the digital turn in marine planning is taking place at different levels depending on: the functionalities present on geoportals, the political support for MSP implementation, the regions of the world, and the level of plan development. According to the three dimensions of digital (marine) governance (Kloppenburg et al., 2022), we reveal that the role of geoportal in MSP is a part of the first dimension by seeing and knowing, sometimes the second dimension by self-engagement and in the most advanced forms of geoportal part of the third dimension by leading actions and interventions. In general, we find that the geoportal is more of a facade than a tool for doing MSP. The digital turn in marine planning is real but does not yet allow the public to be a real stakeholder in the process.

The C-word: how critical cartography, critical GIS and critical data studies can repoliticise disaster-related maps

PurposeMapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are widely used in disaster research and practice. While, in some cases, these practices incorporate methods inspired by critical cartography and critical GIS, they rarely engage with the theoretical discussions that animate those fields.Design/methodology/approachIn this commentary, the author considers three such discussions, and draws out their relevance for disaster studies: the turn towards processual cartographies, political economy analysis of datafication and calls for theorising computing of and from the South.FindingsThe review highlights how these discussions can contribute to the work of scholars engaged in mapping for disaster risk management and research. First, it can counter the taken-for-granted nature of disaster-related maps, and encourage debate about how such maps are produced, used and circulated. Second, it can foster a reflexive attitude towards the urge to quantify and map disasters. Third, it can help to rethink the role of digital technologies with respect to ongoing conversations on the need to decolonise disaster studies.Originality/valueThe paper aims to familiarise disaster studies scholars with literature that has received relatively little attention in this field and, by doing so, contribute to a repoliticisation of disaster-related maps.

Postcolonial DH: Critical Cartographies, Decolonial Archives, and Humanities for the Public

Postcolonial DH: Critical Cartographies, Decolonial Archives, and Humanities for the Public

“Missing the Community for the Dots”: Newspaper Crime Maps, Territorial Stigma and Visual Criminology

By drawing on research on territorial stigmatization, critical cartography, and visual criminology, this article develops a critical literacy of crime maps to scrutinize their ability to function as adequate representations of crime. Focusing on online newspaper crime maps of homicides published by one of Chicago’s major newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times, this article argues that crime maps assign a criminogenic character to urban spaces by spatially inscribing homicides onto community maps. In particular, this article devotes attention to the power of crime visualizations through cartography, developing strategies to educate readers about how to critically think about and read crime maps’ visualizations of the spatiality of crime. This article is intended as both a critique of crime maps’ spatio-visual practices as well as an attempt to develop a critical literacy of crime maps.

Critical cartographies for assessing and designing with planning legacies: the case of Jaap Bakema’s Open Society in ‘t Hool, the Netherlands

ABSTRACT The Open Society appeared as a concept in planning discourse at the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM XI). It attempted to create urban conditions which would allow society to prosper. Despite its good theoretical intentions, the project did not always translate well into practice. We observe that historic approaches and tools have tended to be neglected in urban regeneration projects and discussions, yet we think that they can bring valuable urban transformations. This paper therefore considers the extent to which historic planning tools and theories can be useful for assessing built projects to provide fresh approaches for urban renovation. This paper will reappraise the concept of the Open Society empirically by analysing, critiquing, and imagining its relevance in twenty-first-century planning projects and discourse. This research uses a mostly qualitative approach through critical cartographies as a main medium and to draw conclusions that highlight the power relations in the Dutch neighbourhood of ‘t Hool (Eindhoven) as well as the local conditions and materials that can enable them to plan for a more resilient future. We aim to bridge the gap between theory and practice through a methodology that allows for a broader and deeper understanding of place, history, potentials, and urgencies.

Post-Critical Cartography and Deviance: Overcoming Dysfunctional Aspects of Critical Cartography?!

Post-Critical Cartography and Deviance: Overcoming Dysfunctional Aspects of Critical Cartography?!

Mattering: Per/forming nursing philosophy in the Chthulucene.

This paper presents an overview of the process of entanglement at the 25th International Philosophy of Nursing Conference (IPNC) at University of California at Irvine held on August 18, 2022. Representing collective work from the US, Canada, UK and Germany, our panel entitled 'What can critical posthuman philosophies do for nursing?' examined critical posthumanism and its operations and potential in nursing. Critical posthumanism offers an antifascist, feminist, material, affective, and ecologically entangled approach to nursing and healthcare. Rather than focusing on the arguments of each of the three distinct but interrelated panel presentation pieces, this paper instead focuses on process and performance (per/formance) and performativity as relational, connected and situated, with connections to nursing philosophy. Building upon critical feminist and new materialist philosophies, we describe intra-activity and performativity as ways to dehierarchise knowledge making practices within traditional academic conference spaces. Creating critical cartographies of thinking and being are actions of possibility for building more just and equitable futures for nursing, nurses, and those they accompany-including all humans, nonhumans, and more than human matter.

TopoRadio

This article analyzes the construction of TopoRadio (toporadio.org), an interactive map that showcases publications and archives about Spanish-language radio in the U.S. The map aims to promote a more inclusive and comprehensive representation of U.S. radio history by improving the visibility of contributions from Latinx broadcasters. The article addresses how map-making historically suppressed Spanish-language radio programs and proposes using critical cartography as a framework for mapping back this history. The technical elements of TopoRadio, including publication selection criteria, metadata design, geocoding process, and the appraisal of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, are described to provide scholars with a reproducible method for creating interactive mapping projects. The article concludes with an assessment of the map's effectiveness as a research tool and an analysis of the publications in the field of Spanish-language radio studies included on the map.

Mapping the spatial politics of Australian settler colonialism

Cartography has historically been a weapon of colonists used to demarcate land stolen by empire. More recently, however, ‘critical cartographies’ have emerged as a means of critiquing colonial discourses, revealing maps as representations of the dominating ideologies that produce them. This article explores a series of ongoing questions raised by our own work seeking to map the intersection of colonial and Indigenous governance regimes in so-called Australia. As a visualisation of the intense intervention into Indigenous lives by the settler state, this map tells a story of colonial extraction and elimination, as well as of Indigenous survival, thriving, resistance and resurgence, “denaturalis[ing]” settler geographies of power to contextualise current tensions in governance relations within a continuing history of colonisation (Razack, 2018). Drawing on Indigenous critical theory and the Latourian concept of the immutable mobile (1986) as a way of naming the apparatus that operationalises colonial mapping, we explore the ethical and political dynamics of critical cartography, characterised by a tension between reinscribing and undoing colonial power. We argue that, in navigating and attempting to foreground these tensions, our mapping project has value in its visual inversion of conventional representations of sovereignty. It reveals the fragility, incompleteness, and material violence of colonial sovereignty, which is so often understood as neutral and inevitable. It maps this colonial project in relation to and as rendered impossible by the endurance of Indigenous sovereignty. Against the colonial imagining of Indigenous sovereignty as fragile, disappearing and mutable, it resituates this sovereignty as inhering in the land and in Indigenous peoples as “resilient existent” and as the true immutable (Moreton-Robinson, 2021, p. 258).