Thread by @greenleejw

The greatest trick maps ever playedt is convincing people that they don't lie. Even when they're not trying to lie, maps are still products of cultural convention. I don't get worked up much, but this editorial is giving me the angers. So let's chat. (1)
nytimes.com/2019/09/08/opi…

There are whole books on this subject, not the least of which is Mark Monmonier's aptly-titled "How to Lie with Maps." Brian Harley's work in the later part of the 20th century made clear the degree to which mapping is a subjective activity that inscribes the mapmaker's (2)

perspectives, ideas, & biases into images of geographic space. Matthew Edney wrote about the uses of mapping as a means of controlling British India. Thongchai Winichakul wrote about the ways that Siam adopted modern mapping practices to try to combat European colonialism (3)

& about how the modern Thai government has used those same maps to project 20th c. national ideas backwards in time. European and American mapmakers have a long tradition of writing indigenous peoples off of maps, instead showing vacant spaces that encourage colonialism. (4)

I wrote an article several years ago how three different maps of Hawai'i, from 3 different governments (Kingdom, Republic, & Territory) offer different perspectives of the islands based on how the mapmaker wanted to position the islands in the American political imagination. (5)

This is not just about modern mapmakers, either. Matthew Paris's maps of England in the 13th century (see below) were highly politically charged, in a number of ways mapping independent Wales & Scotland as part of England. (5)

Medieval mappaemundi, which show the world as a stage for human history, offer a geography based on a religious/political perspective that connects European Christians to the space of the End Times, & expands the territory of the Holy Land because of its spiritual importance. (6)

Maps all the time play with space and time to arrange the world in particular ways. The 1500 Juan del la Cosa map changes scale between Europe & the America's, making the New World appear far larger & closer (also, set it at the top, where Paradise sits on most mappaemundi). (7)

And on it goes. And this isn't simply a European issues; various medieval and Early Modern Chinese governments did the same sort of thing. And as European-style mapping came to dominate, other cultures adapted it as a way to speak back to colonial powers. (8)

But for non-state indigenous communities it is still a real point of argument about how to engage with state mapping projects -- do you put yourself on the map to force conversation, or do you try to stay off the map & out of the eye of governments? And if you engage (9)

who gets to decide what parts of local knowledge get mapped? Moreover, how do you reconcile vernacular and indigenous perceptions of space with scientifically received ways of processing geography? Keith Basso's "Wisdom Sits in Places" touches on these problems, and others. (10)

And while I appreciate the editorial's admiration of mapmakers' devotion to accuracy, the fact is that the more we believe in the geographic accuracy of a map the harder it becomes for us to see it's political and cultural messages -- we read the map as neutral (10)

because we are assured of its geographic fidelity. We conflate one type of accuracy with another. After all, geography presents itself as a science, and we very much worship at the altar of Science. So we understand that the map is just showing us the world is it truly is. (11)

Ironically, the more we use maps the worse this conflation gets; we are highly acculturated to maps, using them all the time, but we are not as map-literate as we think. The maps we look at efface as much (if not more) than they show. And we don't think about it. (12)

All this is without even considering the problems of projection -- the world is a globe and any time we portray it on a flat surface we have to make decisions about how we want to distort the geography. Not if we want to...how we want to. 'Cause we have to. (13)

The Mercator map distorts the world. The Gall-Peters projection distorts the world. Every projection does. And a mapmaker has to decide which distortions they're alright with. And this can be political -- Mercator's projection famously makes Europe look large & central. (14)

There's a fairly famous West Wing clip dealing with this, where a group of geographers argue for changing to the Gall-Peters projection. But the scene skates past the fact that Gall-Peters is still making choices about how to warp the world. (15)

Sigh. I'm out of time here, and there is lots more to yell about. Lots of important writers I've not mentioned (Doreen Massey, Denis Wood, Henri Lefebvre, Yi Fu Tuan, Barbara Belyea, Ray Craib, etc. etc. etc.). Anyway, in sum: (16)

Maps are always political, even when they don't intend to be. And they all lie, because they are, by definition and by practice, exclusionary even while they profess to render the world wholly visible & knowable. (17)

Lastly, I'll add this uncomfortable thought: Donald Trump simply did in public what mapmakers have done forever: rewrite the world as he wanted to see it. (fin)

Also...thanks to @annawaymack for bringing this to my attention this morning, and making me all pugnacious. Good friends always know how to knock you out of your regularly-scheduled programing.