Search Results

Working with Maps

Kory Olson

in The Cartographic Capital: Mapping Third Republic Paris

In order to understand fully the proposed communication circuit between map maker and map reader, one may turn to a variety of tools, such as semiotics, the framework for my map image analysis. The ... More

In order to understand fully the proposed communication circuit between map maker and map reader, one may turn to a variety of tools, such as semiotics, the framework for my map image analysis. The investigation of colour, shapes, symbols, and text on maps of Third-Republic Paris help uncover underlying themes of modernity, stability, ease of movement, and growth. There are also benefits to be gained from working with maps. The visual nature of the medium has the potential to draw a reader’s eye much more effectively than pages and pages of black and white script. Beyond discourse, this chapter also investigates the changing role of the French state in the history of cartography. With a population that could more readily access and understand maps as the Third Republic progressed, cartography helped foster the growing field of French urbanism and planning. Furthermore, the government shifted from presenting what it had accomplished in Paris throughout the Third Republic to planning and managing its growth and state cartography needed to adapt. An investigation of historic cartographic colour printing techniques will show how this is done and support this book’s map analysis.Less

Colonial Art and Its Afterlife: Visualizing the Nation Then and Now

Alison Fraunhar

in Picturing Cuba: Art, Culture, and Identity on the Island and in the Diaspora

Art historian Alison Fraunhar examines how graphic and fine arts helped trace the contours of national identity in colonial Cuba well before the island’s independence. Fraunhar dwells on maps and ... More

Art historian Alison Fraunhar examines how graphic and fine arts helped trace the contours of national identity in colonial Cuba well before the island’s independence. Fraunhar dwells on maps and other visual representations of rural and urban landscapes, people, and historical events that were critical to imagine Cuba as a separate nation with its own culture. The author argues persuasively that late nineteenth-century images of the island’s geography, history, and culture continue to be significant visual markers for contemporary Cuban artists.Less

How Margaret Cavendish Mapped a Blazing World

Marion Wynne-Davies

in Reading the Road, from Shakespeare's Crossways to Bunyan's Highways

Marion Wynne-Davies’s chapter quotes ‘Heaven was too long a reach for man to recover at one step and therefore God first placed him upon the earth’. Maps, and the roads they depicted, were therefore ... More

Marion Wynne-Davies’s chapter quotes ‘Heaven was too long a reach for man to recover at one step and therefore God first placed him upon the earth’. Maps, and the roads they depicted, were therefore not only useful for navigation on earth, but also a guide on the spiritual road to ‘heaven’. This chapter considers Margaret Cavendish’s fictional accounts of road travel which are derived not from scientific exploration or a quest for spiritual truth, but from political necessity and harsh personal experience. Wynne-Davies argues that in order to understand the roads and journeys of Cavendish’s ‘blazing world’, it becomes necessary to consider her material experience of space in both its political and personal evocations. The Duchess’s fantastical narrative alludes to a host of material journeys: William Barentsz’s attempt to discover a North East passage; the protective delta of Antwerp; and the journeys to London and to Welbeck Abbey. The final confluence of the worlds occurs on the road through Nottinghamshire, as the Empress and the Duchess – in spirit form – fly above what is the A60 today. While Speed claims that ‘Heaven was too long a reach’, Cavendish’s ‘blazing world’ both challenges and undermines any certainty, political, spiritual or gendered, on the roads of early modern Britain.Less

The Postcolonial Enterprise of Trillium: Maps, Language, Histories, and Multilateral Consciousness

Joan Ormrod (ed.)

in The Canadian Alternative: Cartoonists, Comics, and Graphic Novels

This chapter examines Jeff Lemire's Trillium (2014) which, like many time travel narratives, reflects ideas of colonialism in the appropriation of territory and time by future scientist, Nika and ... More

This chapter examines Jeff Lemire's Trillium (2014) which, like many time travel narratives, reflects ideas of colonialism in the appropriation of territory and time by future scientist, Nika and British explorer Billy's respective cultures. The paper uses postcolonial theories of writers such as Frantz Fanon to draw parallels between colonial discourses of mapping and language in European voyages of discovery of the 16-20th centuries with that of the cultures of the British Empire and the future remnants of humanity.  In his comments on mapping, language and communication, Lemire shows how language and histories are tools of aggression against the Atabithians. Lemire, therefore, proposes alternate reading practices, histories and social orders by playing with the comic form, language and spatiality. In doing so he destabilizes readers’ commonsense perceptions of realism, time and history.Less

Where Cartographies Collide

Jess Bier

in Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine: How Occupied Landscapes Shape Scientific Knowledge

Chapter 1, “Where Cartographies Collide”, analyzes the unique position of maps in Palestine and Israel. Maps are everywhere in the region, but many of them are not used for getting around. This is ... More

Chapter 1, “Where Cartographies Collide”, analyzes the unique position of maps in Palestine and Israel. Maps are everywhere in the region, but many of them are not used for getting around. This is because of the difficulties updating maps due to the restrictions on mobility under the Israeli occupation. The chapter introduces the notion of the geographic production of knowledge, which draws attention to the materialities and spatialities of technoscience. It also analyzes three main themes that run throughout the book: internationalism, landscape, and symmetry. In the process, it tells the story of the parallel lives of two pivotal cartographers of the mid-20th century: Sami Hadawi and David Amiran. Through a comparison of these major figures, it explores how politics shape the practice of science and technology. It also delineates how, despite the use of aerial photography and digital data transmitted via the internet, maps continue to be shaped by where and how they are made—as well as who is making them. Lastly, it draws on Edward Said’s notion of traveling theory to present an argument for a reflexive method of traveling ethnography.Less

Removing Borders, Erasing Palestinians: Israeli Population Maps after 1967

Jess Bier

in Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine: How Occupied Landscapes Shape Scientific Knowledge

Chapter 3, “Removing Borders, Erasing Palestinians”, provides an analysis of the ways that even abstract statistical facts are conditioned by the political landscapes where they are produced. It ... More

Chapter 3, “Removing Borders, Erasing Palestinians”, provides an analysis of the ways that even abstract statistical facts are conditioned by the political landscapes where they are produced. It examines Israeli population maps in the years 1967-1995. After 1967, the close geographic proximity of Palestinians posed a challenge to the policy of not indicating the borders of the Palestinian Territories on Israeli maps. Roberto Bachi, the director of the Israeli population census, sought to address this challenge while also helping to turn cartography into an international science. As a result, he led the census away from mapping shaded areas of uniform population, and towards dot maps of population distribution. Such efforts served to limit the calculation methods at the census cartographers’ disposal. They also revealed that, despite repeated claims by Israeli politicians that Palestinians did not exist, in fact the Israeli cartographers’ methods were inherently shaped by the presence of large numbers of Palestinians in the region. For even though Palestinian areas were intentionally left blank, the resulting gaps actually made them show up on the map. So through their exclusion, Palestinian populations were made visible, and this is one way that the landscapes of the occupation have shaped Israeli maps.Less

The Business of Maps

Rowan Wilken

in Cultural Economies of Locative Media

This chapter builds on prior work on the political economy of location-based services to examine the business of mobile maps, asking the following questions: Who controls maps data? What are these ... More

This chapter builds on prior work on the political economy of location-based services to examine the business of mobile maps, asking the following questions: Who controls maps data? What are these data? Where do these data come from? What is their quality? What does it take to build new mobile maps? What are the motivations for wanting to build new maps? And what are the business and revenue models associated with these maps? The focus of this chapter is an examination of the efforts of one of Google’s key rival firms—Apple—and its struggles to build mapping capacity of its own at sufficient quality to be able to lessen (if not entirely break from) its reliance on Google. Apple presents an interesting case in that, as is well known, it is a major player in other areas of the mobile location services ecosystem, yet took industry pundits by surprise when it announced Apple Maps in 2012.Less

The Shift to the Social Sciences

Licia do Prado Valladares

in The Invention of the Favela

This chapter displays how different foreigners aimed to help the understanding of the favelas through social sciences. The chapter considers one of the most notable to be Father Louis-Joseph Lebret, ... More

This chapter displays how different foreigners aimed to help the understanding of the favelas through social sciences. The chapter considers one of the most notable to be Father Louis-Joseph Lebret, one of the founders of the French Catholic movement Economie et Humanisme. The chapter dips into Lebret’s ideas about favelas. Further on in the chapter, the Peace Corps is introduced. As the book explains, the Peace Corps rose during the Kennedy presidency and were deployed to Brazil. While they received training, their presence was not as effective as they had anticipated.Less

Cortical Memory

Dana H. Ballard

in Brain Computation as Hierarchical Abstraction

The primary way the brain responds quickly is to store previous experiences in a vast tabular format that allows responses to be accessed quickly. The exact format of the memory is probably a ... More

The primary way the brain responds quickly is to store previous experiences in a vast tabular format that allows responses to be accessed quickly. The exact format of the memory is probably a composite of many different constraints, the forms of which are described. The primary anatomical organization of cortex is into hierarchies of predominantly two-dimensional `maps,’ of key features. Such features are computed at the upper layers of each map, the lower layers handing input and output signals. The separate feature characteristics of a map initially led researchers to think of its properties as more or less independent from other maps, but recent research is revealing that the maps’ feature sets are far more integrated and interdependent. Bayesian network models have provided an elegant computational framework that captures this interdependence.Less

Making the Invisible Visible: Designing Technology for Nonliterate Hunter-Gatherers

Jerome Lewis

in Subversion, Conversion, Development: Cross-Cultural Knowledge Exchange and the Politics of Design

Hunter-gatherer land-use in the Congo Basin leaves few traces. One consequence is that their presence is invisible on maps and ignored in land-use planning decisions over the areas they inhabit. ... More

Hunter-gatherer land-use in the Congo Basin leaves few traces. One consequence is that their presence is invisible on maps and ignored in land-use planning decisions over the areas they inhabit. Governments do not recognise their rights to land, conservationists exclude them from rich forest areas, logging roads open up remaining areas to extractive outsiders, and global warming changes rainfall patterns and the seasonal events that normally guide people to wild foods. A forestry company in Congo-Brazzaville seeking a ‘green’ label for its timber sought anthropological advice on how to respect the rights of forest people. This chapter describes the challenges and participatory design process that developed in creating icon-driven software on converted military palmpilots. Maps produced using this technology have become a new way for non-literate communities to be heard by powerful outsiders. A community radio station broadcasting uniquely in local languages will facilitate forest people to develop their own understanding of the situations facing them, share insights, observations and analyses in order to better secure their long-term interests. The creative interaction of non-literate users and ICT is spawning new developments, from new software builds to monitor illegal logging or wildlife, to geographic information systems for non-literate users.Less

Under the surface of the village: public and private negotiations of urban space in Manchester

Michael Atkins

in Realising the City: Urban Ethnography in Manchester

Combining narratives of success and community with imagery and maps characterises and regulates Manchester’s Gay Village as a distinct, bordered, hedonistic and particularly tolerant place. This ... More

Combining narratives of success and community with imagery and maps characterises and regulates Manchester’s Gay Village as a distinct, bordered, hedonistic and particularly tolerant place. This chapter describes the use of collaboratively produced graphic stories, created using combinations of drawings, text, photographs and found images. These 'ethno-graphics' describe lived experiences of men seeking sex in public and engaging in exchanges of intimacy, money, goods and services that challenge the master narratives of that are openly recognised and spoken about in the village.Less

E-motion: Transpacific \ Virtual / Blur

Christopher B. Patterson

in Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games

This chapter provides a conclusive stringing together of erotics, empire, and play by focusing on experiences of virtual tourism and conceiving of “the virtual other.” In video games, the virtual ... More

This chapter provides a conclusive stringing together of erotics, empire, and play by focusing on experiences of virtual tourism and conceiving of “the virtual other.” In video games, the virtual other places attention not onto this other but the inventor, the gazer, who has given up on obtaining a truthful and authentic access to the other and therefore sees them as virtual, somewhere between the real and the fake. Thinking through erotic methods found in the Asian confrontations of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Eve Sedgwick, this chapter argues that the modes of queer erotics in interactive media entice players to reimagine the virtual other by stepping outside of imperial forms of mapping, digital surveillance, and war. It examines discourses of virtual otherness manifested in transpacific cartography within Google Maps, the Civilization game series, and the virtual-reality experience of Google Earth.Less

Nuruddin Farah, Maps

Annabel Patterson

in The International Novel

This chapter offers a reading of Nuruddin Farah's 1986 novel Maps, which tells the story of an orphan born in the disputed African region of Ogaden. Ogaden is the subject of a territorial conflict ... More

This chapter offers a reading of Nuruddin Farah's 1986 novel Maps, which tells the story of an orphan born in the disputed African region of Ogaden. Ogaden is the subject of a territorial conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia, and its condition is a crucial issue in Somali nationalism. According to Farah himself, “nationality” is felt and perceived in Somalia by language rather than by ethnicity. The chapter also looks at Askar's education in cartography and cartology and concludes by discussing how Maps carries on the debate about nationalism and internationalism using subtle language.Less

Mapping Bosnia: Cartographic Representation in Joe Sacco’s Graphic Narratives

Edward C. Holland

in The Comics of Joe Sacco: Journalism in a Visual World

Edward C. Holland’s essay reads Sacco’s maps and mappings of the Bosnian War as interventions in the traditional roles ascribed to cartography, bringing to bear the analytical tools of the discipline ... More

Edward C. Holland’s essay reads Sacco’s maps and mappings of the Bosnian War as interventions in the traditional roles ascribed to cartography, bringing to bear the analytical tools of the discipline of geography to the study of comics.Less

The Social Geography of Prostitution¹

Louise Settle

in Sex for Sale in Scotland: Prostitution in Edinburgh and Glasgow, 1900-1939

This chapter uses court and police records alongside other contemporaries’ writings on prostitution to gain a fuller understanding of how prostitution was organised and to explore the wider social ... More

This chapter uses court and police records alongside other contemporaries’ writings on prostitution to gain a fuller understanding of how prostitution was organised and to explore the wider social implications attached to this use of space. By chronologically mapping the changing location of prostitution in Edinburgh and Glasgow, it is possible to track how emerging technologies and the development of new entertainment venues influenced the location of prostitution and shaped women’s opportunities for successful solicitation. The first half of the chapter focuses on the geography of prostitution in Edinburgh, beginning with street solicitation and moving on to look at the location of brothels. The second half examines the location of prostitution in Glasgow, following a similar pattern. Whilst the previous chapter stressed the role that the state played in shaping the organisation of prostitution, this chapter will show that the women’s utilisation of new commercial and technological developments was at least equally important in that process, thus demonstrating women’s ability to cross boundaries of gender, class and respectable femininity, highlighting these women’s historical agency.Less

Crime City

Robert Samet

in Deadline: Populism and the Press in Venezuela

Chapter three looks at the news stories created from the previous chapter. It uses these stories to show the implicit maps or cartographies that are written into crime news.

Creative freedom and community constraint in Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers

Ahmed Rehana

in Writing British Muslims: Religion, class and multiculturalism

While not itself the subject of a controversy, Nadeem Aslam’s 2004 novel Maps for Lost Lovers, the focus of Chapter 5, thematises and explores the politics of minority offence and the binary of ... More

While not itself the subject of a controversy, Nadeem Aslam’s 2004 novel Maps for Lost Lovers, the focus of Chapter 5, thematises and explores the politics of minority offence and the binary of individual freedom versus cultural censure and censorship that has framed responses to controversies surrounding artistic representations of Islam and Muslims. In tracing the presence and complication of this binary in Maps for Lost Lovers, the chapter explores how far the novel gets beyond the gendered culturalist discourses that have underpinned pronouncements on the ‘failure’ of multiculturalism from both left and right. It argues that despite contextualising the oppressors’ behaviour within their own disempowerment in Britain, the novel appears to present just two alternative positions: individual withdrawal and dissent from community, culture and faith, or complicity with the community’s oppressive practices whose victims are primarily its women and children. The potential for a positive communitarianism formed around religious culture is constantly deflected or stymied, often through a focus on the abuse of women, so that a thoroughgoing multiculturalism predicated on a ‘politics of recognition’ and a commitment to gender equality are held in tension.Less

Dance Maps: A Guide for Dance Experiences

Sondra Fraleigh (ed.)

in Moving Consciously: Somatic Transformations through Dance, Yoga, and Touch

This section discusses Dance Maps, user-friendly maps that present simple structures for use as a guide for dance experiences. Designed for those who want to claim the dancer within, from the ... More

This section discusses Dance Maps, user-friendly maps that present simple structures for use as a guide for dance experiences. Designed for those who want to claim the dancer within, from the professional dancer to the novice, Dance Maps are performance templates not only for the studio but also for natural and architected environments. They are intended to help spark creative uses of transformational dance somatics. Several authors of this book provide examples, including a version of “Be a Stone” and “Be Spinach and Stone Butoh” mapped by Sondra Fraleigh; Back-to-Back exploration for Catherine Schaeffer’s “Motional Baggage”; Ecodances mapped by Alison East; a memory-based transformational Dance Map mapped by Kelly Ferris Lester; and a movement meditation mapped by Robert Bingham. These examples show how teachers of dance in somatic contexts can engage in community building through exploration of choreographic and improvisational structures based on Dance Maps.Less