-------- Original Message --------
Subject: counter-maps and map collections/libraries
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 08:34:15 -0400
From: Peter Rogers <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]


Greetings:

I am a MLS student at the University of Buffalo who has a background
in Environmental Studies and GIS teaching and research.   One of my
interests is the topic of “counter-maps.”  The term, counter-map,
dates from a 1995 article on forest resources in Indonesia by Nancy
Peluso.   Harris and Hazen (2006) define counter-mapping as “efforts
to contest or undermine power relations and asymmetries in relation to
cartographic products and processes  [and] any effort that
fundamentally questions the assumptions or biases of cartographic
conventions, that challenges predominant power effects or mapping, or
that engages in mapping in ways that upset power relations” (p. 115).
There is an extensive discussion of the concept in Wood (2010).  Some
of the approaches related to and overlapping with counter-mapping are
participatory mapping, community mapping, ethnocartography,
self-demarcation, and protest mapping (Chapin et al, 2005).   An early
and important example discussed by Wood is the Inuit Land Use and
Occupancy Project of the late 1960s and 1970s.

As part of my MLS studies, I am exploring how such counter-maps might
fit into more conventional map libraries and collections.  I have a
couple of questions that I would like to put to the Maps-L community.

1) Is anyone aware of any map collections/libraries which include such
counter-maps and/or have a counter-map section?  I have so far been
unable to find one.
2) Should counter-maps be included as part of map
collections/libraries?  If so, should they be integrated directly into
the main collection or should they have a separate section?
3) Should map collections/libraries provide tools and resources to
enable counter-mapping?  This would include books, articles, links to
groups such as http://www.ppgis.net/, and freeware mapping software.

Thanks for your consideration of my questions,

Peter Rogers

References

Harris, Leila and Helen Hazen. (2006). Power of Maps: (Counter)
Mapping for Conservation. ACME 4(1):99-130.

Peluso, Nancy. (1995). Whose woods are these? Counter-mapping forest
territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Antipode 27(4): 383-406.

Wood, Denis. (2010). Rethinking the Power of Maps. Guilford Press.