The Dictionary of Human Geography (20 page)

cartography, history of
The study of the processes whereby people in all cultures and in all periods have variously made and used maps to comprehend, organize and act in space and place, together with their motives for and effects of doing so. A primary element of human geography and the history of geography, the history of cartography is also widely recognized across the humanities and social sciences as an intellectually vibrant and exemplary interdisciplinary field of study that draws on and makes significant contribu tions to many historical fields. Note that ?his torical cartography? per se is the practice of representing past distributions or events in maps; as such, it constitutes a particular topic for historians of cartography (Skelton, 1972). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Librarians, professors, lawyers and lay scholars (notably collectors and their dealers) have studied maps as historical phenomena since the 1700s. Traditionally, such studies have elucidated the content of old maps in order to generate locational and morpho logical data for use by other historians, notably those of geography, exploration and coLo niaLism, but also historical geographers, geo morphologists, lawyers, archaeologists and students of cities and landscapes. Even so, there was little disciplinary identity for such ?map history? before the twentieth century: map historians were few in number, widely dispersed and they were constrained within national schools by differential physical and linguistic access to primary sources. The viscount de Santarem?s 1839 neologism of ?cartography?, to mean the study of old maps, accordingly could not take root; it was instead quickly appropriated by professional map makers. A more coherent scholarly commu nity coalesced around Imago Mundi, founded in 1935 by Leo Bagrow; this is still the leading journal in the field and has since 1967 given rise to biennial international conferences (Skelton, 1972; Harley, 1986, 1987; Edney, 2005a). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The successful promotion after 1945 of cartography as an academic subject entailed the expansion and consolidation of a previ ously minor, sporadic and internalist history of cartographic techniques. The new concern for such a ?history of cartography? was truly innovative in that it focused on map form rather than on map content, and on archival and contextual research rather than on carto bibliography and map analysis. It generated significant studies, for example of the histories of map printing and thematic mapping. From this perspective, academic cartography pro vided historians of cartography however briefly with both an intellectual framework (Woodward, 1974) and an institutional home (Harley and Woodward, 1989; Edney, 2005b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Both ?map history? and the ?history of car tography? were thoroughly intertwined with the modern ideology of cartography. Indeed, that ideology has in large part depended upon cartographic history for legitimation: the historians' narratives of past cartographic progress, whether in content or in form, valid ate the modern convictions that maps are unproblematic replications of geographical data (see cartographic reason) and that cartography is an inherently moral practice aimed at improving the human condition. Map history has thus served as a surrogate for the triumphs of modern Western science and civilization generally. These empiricist and positivist ideals were further perpetuated by the historical narratives constructed in order to justify an academic status for cartog raphy (Edney, 2005b), and they further underpin a rapidly growing popular literature that allies the powerful myth of cartographic progress to the equally powerful myth of the lone scientific genius. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Paradoxically, the ?history of cartography' ended up establishing the broader intellectual potential of map studies and led to the prolif eration of a ?history of cartography' that has taken map studies far beyond the confines of academic cartography and geography (Edney, 2005a,b). Several factors contributed to the shift: attention to the larger historical record revealed many more cartographic activities than were encompassed by the established canon; detailed archival studies increasingly suggested that maps must be considered as humanistic as well as technological/scientific documents; academic cartography's adher ence to models of communication made some historians aware of the need to study how maps were used as well as made; and academic cartography's claims to intellectual autonomy were matched by arguments that the history of cartography should no longer be subservient to other fields (esp. Blakemore and Harley, 1980). A triumphal, empiricist history of cartographic progress was increasingly recog nized as intellectually bankrupt. In 1977, Denis Wood could accordingly present a structuralist reinterpretation of the history of cartography as part of a larger critique of academic cartography (see structuralism). For Wood, the history of cartography repli cated the development of spatial cognition in the individual; he has subsequently clung to this argument, even as he has made truly significant distinctions between the necessarily social processes of ?map making' and individ ual processes of cognitive ?mapping' (Wood and Fels, 1992). (NEW PARAGRAPH) By the late 1970s, Brian Harley and David Woodward had set out to create a new, autonomous discipline of the history of cartography by unifying the widely dispersed literature within a multi volume History of car tography. Even with only three of six volumes published to date, the series has already proven enormously influential in promoting the catholic and humanistic study of carto graphic history. The extensive consideration given to non Western and pre modern carto graphies has loosened the west?s putative stranglehold on ?proper' cartography and has seriously undermined the conviction that maps must be geometrically consistent, meas ured and graphic in nature. The series has demonstrated unequivocally not only that the history of cartography is a valid field of study in its own right but also that it cannot hope to make significant contributions as long as it adheres to modern cartographic ideology (Harley and Woodward, 1987 continues; see Woodward, Delano Smith and Yee, 2001, esp. pp. 23 9; Edney, 2005b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Harley also set out to create a new intellec tual identity for the field. His initial foray, with Michael Blakemore, drew on the art historical principles of iconography to demonstrate the manner in which maps necessarily bear cultural and social significance in addition to factual and locational data (Blakemore and Harley, 1980). Subsequently, and largely influenced by the work of philosopher historian Michel Foucault, Harley advanced a series of essays on the inherently political nature of all maps (Harley, 2001b). Harley's essays from the 1980s were crucial in that they crystallized the intellectual concerns with modern cartographic ideology already expressed by many scholars across several dis ciplines, waved the flag for more critical map studies and served as prominent vehicles for human geography's adoption of approaches informed by post structuralism. His essays were nonetheless incomplete. Harley suc ceeded brilliantly in exposing modern carto graphic ideology by wrenching off its mask of objectivity, but he was ultimately unable to theorize a new, critical paradigm (Edney, 2005a). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Parallel to, drawing on, and at the same time motivating Harley?s theoretical exposes were studies by scholars in other fields who, unburdened with any disciplinary baggage, recognized (or simply ignored) the traditional shortcomings of map history. These scholars included sociologists and political scientists as well as historians (e.g. Winichakul, 1994; see geo body), but most were literary scholars who began to consider maps as simply one more strategy of representation within spatial discourses. For example, Carter (1987) exposed the ?spatial history? of the shifting configuration of Australia in texts, graphics and cartographics, and Helgerson (1992) explored the early modern construction of ?England?? as a site of national desire. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Today, the history of cartography features several potentially conflicting elements. Its practitioners are distributed across several dis ciplines and its institutional situation suffers accordingly. But it has a strong intellectual core in the rejection of traditional map history and the concomitant recognition that maps are cultural documents: maps are not the ter ritory, in that they do not represent the land and its essential characteristics in an unprob lematic manner, yet maps emphatically are the territory, in that they are intellectual construc tions through which humans have organized, comprehended and manipulated spaces and places. Critical histories of cartography have tended to examine the functioning of maps as texts within specific spatial discourses, especially those of nationaLism and Western rationalism, to elucidate how cartographic expression has contributed, often crucially, to associating particular meanings and configu rations of identity with certain territorial entities (especially state and empire) and peoples (especially nations). Such studies fea ture a renewed emphasis on map reading, now with the goal of elucidating the discursive meanings that would likely have been read into maps by their readers; particular success in this respect has attended the study of map forms previously deemed marginal or ephem eral, such as maps in art, modern road maps or maps in educational texts. These studies have approached, inter alia, British and mod ern India, early modern Europe and Japan, the modern USA and Turkey, and nineteenth century Mexico and Thailand; classical histo rians currently debate the extent to which Greek and Roman conceptions of territory were cartographically constructed. Critical histories of cartography have also addressed: the instrumental deployment of maps to create and maintain states and empires, overtly underpinning the application of juridical power, with recent explorations of thematic cartography?s contributions to modern gov ernmentaLity in Europe and North America; the articulations of spatial discourses with cartographic practices, whereby distinct ive cartographic modes can be discerned; the intersections of Western and indigenous peoples, which tend to break down the neat boundaries with which ?text? and ?graphic? have been habitually circumscribed; and the patterns of map consumption, particularly in terms of ?print culture?, in order to delimit the social limits of specific discourses in which maps figured and to explore the inter connections between maps and other repre sentational strategies (Edney, 2006). All told, critical histories of cartography have promoted cartographic studies into a significant com ponent of research in the humanities and social sciences. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Yet there is need for caution. Modern carto graphic ideologies continue to infect much supposedly critical work. Whereas the very concept of ?map? is itself culturally determined (Jacob, 2006) and the making of maps is distributed across several modes that are not necessarily connected (Edney, 1993), there remains a tendency to treat ?map? as a self evident category that is constant across cultures and to understand ?cartography? as a singular endeavour; discourse analysis based on such misconceptions inevitably fails. Again, a reading of Harley?s essays without consideration of the larger stream of post structuralist thought has led many scholars to continue to understand map meaning as being determined solely by mapmakers working for socially privileged patrons: in this arrange ment, a map?s meaning is bifurcated into a culturally insensitive ?factual? layer and a ?symbolic? layer that is manipulated by the map?s maker to achieve some kind of effect on its readers. Such an approach denies the agency of the map reader and so fails to realize fully the conventions of cartographic dis courses and their constructions of spatial meaning. In this respect, the transition to a coherent critical paradigm of cartographic history remains incomplete. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Furthermore, critical theory does not pro vide by itself a sufficient basis for the history of cartography. Rigorous analysis of a spatial dis course requires a clear grasp of the forms of maps involved in the discourse, of the social and geographical patterns of that discourse, and of the relevant political and economic contexts. That is, critical studies must be competently grounded in an empirical archive. Much scope accordingly remains for carto bibliographies to elucidate the patterns of map availability (e.g. Krogt, 1997 ), although the carto bibliographies need to be carefully designed and implemented. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The history of cartography might thus at present be described as a three layer intellec tual palimpsest. Traditional approaches have not been completely erased: they are still quite (NEW PARAGRAPH) visible, especially within popular writing, and it is hard to escape the restrictions of the progressivist canon and its underlying pre sumptions. Academic cartographers continue to pursue an internalist history, now recon figuring it to account for the new directions being taken by digital technologies (Slocum, McMaster, Kessler and Howard, 2008). Intellectually, the future clearly lies with the new catholic and critical history of cartog raphy; its challenge is to turn the older strains of cartographic historiography to its own ends, remaining empirically strong but con solidating a coherent and interdisciplinary intellectual presence. mhe (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Edney (2005a); Harley (1987, 2001b); Jacob (NEW PARAGRAPH) . See also http://maphistory.info/ (NEW PARAGRAPH)
case study
The case study epitomizes a pro cess or complex set of processes in context, thereby demonstrating how theoretical tools can be applied to the social world. The idea of the case study emerged in the 1930s through attempts to make the human sciences a parallel enterprise to the biophysical sci ences, specifically in trying to see instanti ations of sociological theory in the manner of medical case histories. Urban sociologists, mainly from the chicago schooL, saw the case study as the ideal method to produce hypotheses. For instance, Whyte?s Street corner society (1943) is a classic case study of life, gangs, work and politics in a working class Italian neighbourhood in Boston. By the late 1960s, the sociological approach of Grounded Theory advocated building theory through case studies, as a kind of stylized empiricism. (NEW PARAGRAPH) However, sociological thought has paid much longer attention to what Max Weber called ?configurations' of seemingly objective regularities or hypothetical laws, which only become intelligible in specific, concrete situ ations (Weber, 1949). Considered as a Weberian configuration, the case study separ ates contingent from necessary causes and context from structuring process, to show how both elements come together in concrete conjunctures. The Weberian approach, it would seem, provides more durable analyt ical tools than some of its successors in urban sociology. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Contemporary critiques from scholars such as Dipesh Chakrabarty of the Subaltern Studies Collective question the underlying pre sumption to objectify lived histories in cases that conceal the translation oflocal into expert (NEW PARAGRAPH) knowledge (see subaLtern studies). This insight would suggest that as long as disciplin ary authority is itself part of the object of analy sis, case studies can remain efficacious in engaging concrete interactions between expert knowledges and forms of belonging. Such an interactive conception of the case study is par ticularly useful from the perspective of a human geography that strives to show how broader processes work through specific con stellations of social space. Through Massey's notion of an extroverted sense of pLace (Massey, 1994b), one can conceive of ?case geographies' as intersections of dynamic, mobile, constructed and contested spatial pro cesses. Another constructive critique of case studies emerges from Mary Poovey's (1998) interrogation of the boundaries between descriptive and interpretive evidence in the making of the modern fact. Poovey?s analysis contrasts the kind of evidence that makes for case studies against the seemingly non evaluative numerical and statistical indices that surround such objects of evidence. The useful insight in thinking of particular geographical cases is to ask what work the division of nomo thetic and idiographic forms of knowledge accomplishes in maintaining or undermining the coherence of actual cases. sc (NEW PARAGRAPH)