Mapping

Mapping can be understood as the practice of making maps. Under the influence of new technologies and tools like GPS and smartphones, and the rise of the open source movement (to name just a few developments), maps, increasingly, are no longer viewed as finalised end products. Instead, attention has shifted towards the process of map-making and critical questions are being raised concerning who is (allowed to be) involved in this process. Who, for instance, determines the map’s key of symbols? And, if map readers (users) can also become (co-)authors (makers) of a map?

Considered as a process, mapping can be understood as a contextualised and localised performative practice – in a spatial, as well as social and political, sense. There is a critical difference between making maps as artefacts and mapping as a performance. Where geo-spatial maps help us visualise and measure the world around us, mapping as performative act enables us to question and negotiate the world through the making and remaking of the map. When organised as a collective endeavour (involving multiple actors) and/or as an iterative process (working with cycles of mapping and re-mapping), mapping can be opened up to participation. Collective, collaborative mapping thus allows us to engage in negotiation with (issues concerning) the world around us. Thus, as it evolves in the ‘unfolding action’, mapping is not a process that establishes a particular, perceived reality as ‘right’, but, rather, a way of constructing forms of knowledge in a manner that can do justice to multiple perspectives on reality.