William Rankin

After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century

Traversing varied material, institutional, and conceptual terrains, plotting shifts in how space has been represented and enacted throughout the 20th century, and rendering connections between spatial technologies and politics, After The Map ventures far beyond conventional boundaries of the history of cartography. It is a beautiful book, not only in its dazzling array of illustrations (available in high-resolution colour form on the accompanying website, www.afterthemap.info [2]), but also in the elegance of its writing and the deftness of its arguments. Case studies of rich technological and ideational complexity – compelling enough in isolation – serve as foundations for stories on a far grander scale, exploring the changing forms of globalism and functioning of state power during the 20th century. On this basis alone, William Rankin’s work deserves a wide readership. The analytical nuance and spirit of humility that runs throughout the book means that it goes further still. Among the most significant developments in spatial representations and practices during the 20th century, Rankin suggests, was a shift away from timeless, singular truth to active use and engagement. It seems to me that After The Map partakes in a similar logic. Rather than just being told a particular tale, readers are encouraged to think more deeply and clearly about issues such as the stakes of knowing and of not knowing about space, and the ways in which all humans shape, and are in turn shaped by, spatial representations and technologies. It is above all else this intellectual generosity, summed up by the conclusion taking the form not of prescriptive statements but of four open-ended questions (pp. 297–8), that makes reading the book such an engaging and edifying experience.

Zombie projects, negative networks, and multigenerational science: The temporality of the International Map of the World

The International Map of the World was a hugely ambitious scheme to create standardized maps of the entire world. It was first proposed in 1891 and remained a going concern until 1986. Over the course of the project’s official life, nearly every country in the world took part, and map sheets were published showing all but a few areas of the planet. But the project ended quite unceremoniously, repudiated by cartographers and mapping institutions alike, and it is now remembered as a ‘sad story’ of network failure. How can we evaluate this kind of sprawling, multigenerational project? In order to move beyond practitioners’ (and historians’) habit of summarizing the entire endeavor using the blunt categories of success and failure, I propose a more temporally aware reading, one that both disaggregates the (persistent) project from the (always changing) network and sees project and network as invertible, with the possibility of zombie projects and negative networks that can remain robust even when disconnected from their original goals. I therefore see the abandonment of the International Map of the World as resulting from vigorous collaboration and new norms in cartography, not from lack of cooperation or other resources. New categories are required for analyzing science over the long durée.

Visualizing Disciplines, Transforming Boundaries

Academic disciplines are a comfort and a cage: Their shared literature creates communities and defines common problems, but they can also inhibit the exploration of uncharted territory. Disciplinary boundaries frame the basic questions of research. What should I read? Where should I look for new ideas or collaborators? Just as important, when should I stop reading? These questions are hardly new, but of late they have clearly taken on a new urgency. Mass digitization has lowered the barriers to entering unfamiliar fields and made it easy to find common interests in unexpected places. Even going to the library is now a rare chore.

The Geography of Radionavigation and the Politics of Intangible Artifacts

During the middle of the twentieth century, radionavigation systems became an important part of the built environment. They created a durable, semi-permanent spatial framework for a wide variety of tasks—everything from intercontinental air travel to new forms of high-precision surveying. This article argues that these systems constructed a new kind of transnational geography, well before satellites, and that large-scale spatial integration followed more from political failure and commercial competition than from the kind of topdown military politics later associated with GPS. The article also sees radio as one of a broad class of related phenomena—intangible artifacts—that are undoubtedly material, but only selectively visible, obstinate, or “thingy.” These artifacts share a particular spatial and temporal logic and have played a crucial role in the emergence of new forms of geographic power during the last hundred years.