-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: counter-maps and map collections/libraries
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:39:04 -0400
From: Peter Rogers <[log in to unmask]>
To: mapsL <[log in to unmask]>


Brendan:

Thanks for your thoughts on the definition which I posted.  Your
comments indicate that it's important to distinguish between the work
of professional/academic cartographers and geographers engaged in a
theoretically informed critical cartography and the products of
communities, activists, etc. that are designed to serve more immediate
political needs (and perhaps a third, very distinct, category for the
Wizard, http://www.wizard.gen.nz/).  Plus, there is the question of
when does a counter-map cease to be a "counter" and instead becomes
the artifact to be countered that is suggested by your noting the
commercialization of certain forms of oppositional mapping.

I imagine that Australia does have a very rich history of indigenous
mapping, and that is something I should investigate further.

Peter


2011/6/28 Brendan Whyte <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>
>> 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”
>
> This could be interpreteed to mean alternative projections, such as the Peters Projection championed by the New Internationalist.
> You could also consider upside down world maps, such as the Wizard Projection espoused by the Wizard of Christchurch
> and Mcarthurs universal Corrective map of the World (now produced commercially), and Buckminster-Fullers Dymaxion airocean world icosahedronic projection. Then there's the issue of the assimilation of these radical cartographic projections by mainline commercial companies (evil capitalism):  Hema in Australia sell an upside down world map (up to its 8th edition!), and several national mapping agencies (OS & LINZ?) have produced upside down maps of their own countries for use by women navigating in a car while their husbands drive.
>
> Much indigenous mapping (asking Aborigines to draw a map of the places in their songlines, their dreaming, or just to note down waterholes and local names and features of import to them). See for example individual hand-drawn items in the Daisy Bates collection of maps http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1030147
>  (Bates was an anthropologist working with Aborigines in western Australia).
>
> Library of Congress G-schedule cataloguing places map projections at .B72
> so world maps on weird projections: G3201.B72
> USA on weird projecitonS: G3701.B72 etc.
>
> Any mainline map colelction classifies its maps on a geogrpahical basis and then on a subject basis, so countermap of a particular planet.reigon/country/city would be housed with the other 'normal' maps covering that geography. Depending on what they show, and how they show it they will fit neatly into one of the subjct cutters within the geographic classification
> (e.g. world upside down maps mentioned above).
>
>
>
>
> Dr Brendan Whyte
> Assistant Map Curator
> Map Section
> National Library of Australia
> Parkes
> ACT 2600
> AUSTRALIA
>
>