Gwilym Eades

Determining environmental determinism

This commentary is a direct response to the Forum article ‘Environmentalist thinking and/in geography’ by Radcliffe et al. (2010). Two main problems are addressed: the perpetuation of a false analogy between cultural and biological evolution, and a misunderstanding of memes. I review the literature and summarize the main issues in cultural and biological evolution and in the related field of memetics, noting ways in which the Forum’s authors’ arguments might be strengthened. In conclusion, some suggestions are made for how geographers might productively engage with innovative ideas from other closely related disciplines.

Counter-Mapping as Assemblage

This paper explores the utility of assemblage theory for intergenerational counter-mapping and, through this, for reconfigurations of indigeneity. Counter-mapping is theorised as a kind of assemblage that, through intergenerational learning, is fundamentally memetic (composed of evolving units of information) in nature. Assemblage is theorised as having three aspects (relations of exteriority, meshworks and memes) for reconfiguring indigeneity in line with spatio-temporal aspects of memes. Counter-mapping assemblages are explored with examples of First Nations’ (indigenous peoples residing in Canada) political and commemorative activity. Kaachewaapechuu, a long commemorative walk in the northern Quebec Cree village of Wemindji, acts as a case study for exploring how assemblages-as-memes can be used to theorise new kinds of counter-mapping that reconfigure indigenous commemoration precisely as political, and therefore as not separate from more media-driven aspects of Canadian politics, including those concerning its First Nations. Global positioning systems and Google Earth mapping platforms were used during the primary author’s participation in kaachewaapechuu, providing for the exploration of new media platforms upon which such a re-theorised politics might be envisioned.

Myth, Artifice, Nets

Second, maps are demonstrated by Wood and Fels to be texts, whose ideologies are conveyed by way of the ‘‘stuff’’ around and within the map. In this way, an ‘‘epimap’’ is added to a ‘‘perimap’’ to make a ‘‘paramap,’’ which fixes perception upon the second-order message of the map, not just the map itself. The early work of Roland Barthes makes an appearance here: the structural Barthes interested in structural analyses of texts, narratives, and photographs (Saper 1997).