This week’s readings
- David Pinder, Mapping Worlds
- Denis Wood, Maps Blossom in the Springtime of the State
- Mark Monmonier, Maps, Votes, and Power
- Thongchai Winichakul, The Coming of a New Geography
Winichakul takes us through the evolution of geography as a discipline in the Kingdom of Siam (Thailand today), the result of creative encounters between East and West, or as he puts it rather poetically, “the rendezvous of indigenous astrology and Western astronomy, as well as everything in the spectrum in between” (p. 46).
The actions of Siamese nobleman Thipakorawong and Mongkut’s challenge to the court astrologers of his re-enact tensions between science and religious tradition in Western Europe. Indeed they remind one of attempts by late-Medieval European scholars to reconcile new scientific understandings of the universe with their theological convictions – resulting in various forms of deism – if only to justify them to a religious public still beholden to the rigid orthodoxies of the Catholic Church.
Even more interesting is Winichakul’s focus on the transition from indigenous to “modern” understandings of space, which only underscores the fact that maps do more than represent reality. They actively shape reality by shaping the very terms by which we imagine the nation – in this case, the “geo-body of Siam”. To imagine a nation on a contemporary map is to associate a country with fixed boundaries, a state, and rules that govern the international system.
Denis Wood picks up on this theme by pointing out that by describing maps as actual representations of reality, there is a tendency to naturalize them, and therefore to obscure the social relations that necessitate the production and use of maps. Wood emphasizes that maps are a relatively recent invention bound to state power rather than originating in a ‘natural’ human tendency to put place on paper.
With the rise of new mapping technologies, and the increasing confidence with which they are being used by a growing number of people, it seems the possibility exists to subvert the mapping monopoly of the “experts”, and for both the purposes and techniques of cartography to be placed in the hands of the wider public.
Similarly, David Pinder argues that maps almost always fulfil an ideological function; that is, they function in the service of specific interests at specific times. Deconstruction is especially useful in unpicking the truths established by maps, by reading them as texts – analysing their authorship, relationship to other texts, signs and symbols that together form their unique rhetoric. Pinder also draws on situationist thinking, inspired in part by Debord and Lefebvre, to underscore the performativity of maps and to complicate interpretations of maps as simply tools of power (or alternatively, ‘resistance’).
Monmonier takes the case of the redistricting of New York city to illustrate the intersections between votes, legislation, power, and cartography. This could certainly be applicable to LGU politics in the Philippines, where voting populations – determined by the jurisdictional scope of municipalities and cities – figure highly in decisions by local political dynasties and national parties during election season.
EarthReWrite 