Jeremy W. Crampton

Maps as social constructions: power, communication and visualization

Two developments in cartography mark an epistemic break with the assumption that maps are unproblematic communication devices. These are 1) investigations of maps as practices of power-knowledge; and 2) ‘geographic visualization’ (GVis) which uses the maps power to explore, analyze and visualize spatial datasets to understand patterns better. These developments are key components of a ‘maps as social constructions’ approach, emphasizing the genealogy of power in mapping practices, and enabling multiple, contingent and exploratory perspectives of data. Furthermore, this approach is an opportunity for cartography to renew its relationship with a critical human geography.

Cartography: maps 2.0

At 11.35 am PDT on 18 September 2007 at Vandenberg Air Force base in California, DigitalGlobe’s new WorldView-1 satellite launched into orbit. The satellite is capable of collecting imagery over as much as three-quarters of a million square kilometers a day in resolution as fi ne as 0.5 m. A second satellite will be launched in 2008, capable of photographing nearly a million square kilometers daily at the same high resolution. The data are twice the resolution of the pre-vious industry leader, the IKONOS satellite launched in 1999 and close to the military’s own resolution of 10 cm (Monmonier, 2002).What is significant about the launch is not only the extent and resolution of the imagery (which from all vendors now covers over half of the world’s population) but also the fact that this imagery will be available commercially (look for it in Google Earth). Such imagery, alongside the tremendous possibilities of ‘crowdsourced’ geospatial data, represent interesting new develop-ments in cartography.In the fi rst of three reviews assessing the current state of cartography, I focus on the explosion of new ‘spatial media’ on the web. This topic goes under a bewildering number of names including the geospatial web or geoweb (Scharl and Tochtermann, 2007), neogeography (Turner, 2006), locative media (Rheingold, 2002), DigiPlace (Zook and Graham, 2007a), spatial crowdsourcing or geocollaboration (Hopfer and MacEachren, 2007) and map hacking (Erle

Cartography: performative, participatory, political

This report examines the ways in which mapping is performative, participatory and political. Performativity has received increasing attention from scholars, and cartography is no exception. Interest has shifted from the map as object to mapping as practice. Performativity is a cultural, social and political activity; maps as protest and commentary. The internet both facilitates and shapes popular political activism, but scholars have been slow to grasp amateur political mappings, although analysis of political deployments of mapping in state, territorial and imperial projects remains rich. Finally, some authors suggest that cartography be understood as existence (becoming) rather than essence (fixed ontology).

Interactivity Types in Geographic Visualization

This paper introduces and discusses types of interactivity that can be used in digital mapping environments. The interactivity types are placed in the framework of geographic visualization (GVis) in order to extend the GVis emphasis on exploratory, interactive and private functions of spatial displays. After defining interactivity in general, four categories of interactivity are proposed: with (1) the Data; (2) the Data Representation; (3) the Temporal Dimension; and (4) Contextualizing Interaction. Three benefits of this typology are discussed. First, interactivity types can be combined to build an interactive environment. More powerful interactive mapping environments not only employ more interactivity types, but combine types from different categories. Second, the typology allows cartographers to compare and critique different mapping and GIS environments and gives cartography educators and students a mechanism for understanding the different types of interactivity, as well as a set of concepts for imagining and creating new interactive environments. Third, a typology of interactivity gives interface designers a mechanism with which to identify needs and measure interface effectiveness. In order to examine these issues in practice, two common interactive mapping environments are briefly examined to determine the interactivity types employed, and a measurable difference of interactive potential is obtained.

Geospatial Information Visualization User Interface Issues

User interfaces for geospatial information are the tools by which users interact with and explore that information. The provision of appropriate interface tools for exploiting the potential of contemporary geospatial visualization products is essential if they are to be used efficiently and effectively. This paper addresses issues and challenges in interface development and usage that are identified as paramount within the geospatial visualization community.

Cartographic calculations of territory

Two themes dominate this year’s report: calculation and territory. Both of these are larger issues than cartography itself, but cartography has been increasingly drawn into their ambit such that we might tentatively identify cartographic calculations of territory. Ranging across a wide set of problems including colonial, political and racial mappings, not to mention indigeneity and philosophical concerns of ontology, calculation and territory mark out a wide swath of cartographically informed work.

The Ethics of GIS

There has so far been little discussion of the ethics of geographic information systems (GIS), yet they are complex and driven by conflicting goals. This paper argues for an ethical analysis of GIS which goes beyond “intemalist” judgements of good behavior and adherence to accuracy standards to a contextualized “extemalist” one. Only when spatial technologies such as GIS are understood as part of a nexus of relations which includes academia in the commodification of information can GIS practice by fully analyzed. A four-stage sequence of ethical practice is proposed, in which GIS has achieved the second stage. GIS practice and use is a fluctuating, contested area, which, therefore, is not suited to a rigid code of ethics. A better approach is based in the internalist and externalist dialectic.

Space, politics, calculation: an introduction

In a whole range of social, cultural and political issues the interrelation of number and politics is a critical question. How has this relation transformed the politics of space since the emergence of political arithmetic in the seventeenth century? How has it been pursued in the practices and thinking of government? How did it impact and frame such issues as race, gender and colonization? While geography’s quantitative revolution led to a number of works studying the mathematics of geography, there has been little sustained engagement with the inverted question, that of the geographies of mathematization and calculation. Recent work in Environment and Planning A (Philo (ed.) 1998) and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (Barnes and Hannah (eds) 2001a, 2001b) has made some advances in this area by opening up the problematic. One of the significant differences in inverting the relationship between geography and mathematics is that it clarifies the way mathematics and mathematical thought impacts both historical and contemporary politics through the idea of calculation. The historical angle is important, as while quantification as a method in geography is relatively recent, issues of number and calculation and their geographical implications have a much longer heritage. This collection of papers provides a theoretically informed and empirically rich intervention into these issues. By calculation we mean both the purely quantitative, such as Cartesian geometry, numbers, counting and the mathematization of the subject, and qualitative issues of group management such as ranking, ordering, organizing and measuring. These latter forms of spatial calculation rely less on the obviously mathematical and more on a model of ‘rationality’ which, through its root in the Latin ratio, is both connected to mathematical models and is part of a wider process through which space is made ‘amenable to thought’ (Osborne and Rose 2004: 212). Diverse peoples too are understood as a population, a way of conceiving of bodies in plural that can be conceptualized as a group with norms, either statistical or moral. Forms of organizing, Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 7, No. 5, October 2006

The New Political Economy of Geographical Intelligence

A troubling new political economy of geographical intelligence has emerged in the United States over the last two decades. The contours of this new political economy are difficult to identify due to official policies keeping much relevant information secret. The U.S. intelligence community increasingly relies on private corporations, working as contractors, to undertake intelligence work, including geographical intelligence (formally known as GEOINT). In this article we first describe the geography intelligence “contracting nexus” consisting of tens of thousands of companies (including those in the geographical information systems and mapping sector), universities and nonprofits receiving Department of Defense and intelligence agency funding. Second, we discuss the “knowledge nexus” to conceptualize how geographical knowledge figures in current U.S. intelligence efforts, themselves part of the U.S. war on terror and counterinsurgency (COIN). To analyze the contracting nexus we compiled and examined extensive data on military and intelligence contracts, especially those contracts awarded by the countrys premier geographical intelligence agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), for satellite data. To analyze the knowledge nexus we examined recent changes in the type of geographical knowledges enrolled in and produced by the U.S. intelligence community. We note a shift from an emphasis on areal and cultural expertise to a focus on calculative predictive spatial analysis in geographical intelligence. Due to a lack of public oversight and accountability, the new political economy of geographical intelligence is not easy to research, yet there are reasons to be troubled by it and the violent surveillant state it supports.

THE BIOPOLITICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR GEOSURVEILLANCE

Biopolitical use of geosurveillance can create and sustain a politics of fear. Although the majority of surveillance literature focuses on individuals, in this article I focus on groups and populations, drawing on Michel Foucaults analysis of biopolitics. After discussing the forms and history of geosurveillance I argue that three particularly important factors contribute to these politics: divisions, geospatial technologies, and the risk‐based society. In order to combat the negative unintended consequences of these factors I suggest that more attention be paid to the mutual relationships between geospatial technology and politics, rather than on assessments of the value of individual surveillant technologies.