Moving Maps-Cosgrove

7/24/2019 Moving Maps-Cosgrove

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9 Moving maps The historiography of maps and mapping – of ‘cartography’, touse thenineteenth-century neologism – has been revolutionized in thepastquarter-century. The shift is as profound as the changes thathave taenplace in map-maing and map use themselves, resulting fromsatelliteremote sensing, digitization of spatially referenced data andcomputer

manipulation of information and images. Three main changes incartographichistoriography are !orth highlighting. "irst, there has beendetailede#posure of the normalizing and often ideological authority ofmaps, andcriticism of the active roles cartography has played in the ne#usof po!erno!ledgethat frames and shapes the geographies of the modern !orld.

$eographic and topographic mapping and maps have beencritical tools forthe modern state and its agencies in shaping social and moralspaces, andthey played a central role in the %estern physical andintellectual colonizationof territories, peoples and the natural !orld. "or over t!ocenturiesthematic and statistical maps have e#tended these roles in

supporting thebureaucratic concerns of the modern state. &istorians ofcartography havee#amined these processes across many speci'c instances.(

)econd, mapmaing’sscienti'c claims to o*er progressively accurate and ob+ective,scaled representations of spatial relations, have beenchallenged !ith recognitionof the inescapable imaginative and artistic character of

cartographic



process and products that accompany framing, selection,composition andgraphic representation of mapped information. olour andsymbolization,

for e#ample, are chosen and applied to maps according to!idely accepteddesign principles, but their relationships to the appearance oflandscapesrepresented on topographic maps, or the bands !ithin theinfrared spectrumon a remote sensed image, are necessarily arbitrary. Thisrecognitionhas opened up an e#citing ne! 'eld of connections bet!een

scienti'c mapmaingand creative art practices. Third, and closely related to the 'rstt!odevelopments, is the recognition of mapping as a comple#cultural process(

in !hich the map itself represents merely one stage. Tounderstand thecontents, meaning and signi'cance of any map requires that itbe reinsertedinto the social, historical and technical conte#ts and processesfrom !hich itemerges and upon !hich it acts. This involves e#amining themap not onlyas a discrete ob+ect but as the outcome of speci'c technical andsocialprocesses and the generator of further social processes as itenters andcirculates in the social !orld./

These assumptions of the critical approach to the nature andhistory of maps are today !idely accepted among historians and !riterson cartography,but many !ould argue that they are still insu0ciently embracedbypractising map-maers, especially today !hen many of thoseproducing andmanipulating maps are not trained cartographers. Most

professional cartographers



are acutely a!are of the limits of their art even as they strivefordisinterested ob+ectivity and scienti'c integrity in their map-maing.1 2ut

maps made by formally trained cartographers constitute anever-smallerproportion of the map images available today, especially thoseavailableonline rather than dra!n or printed. $eographic 3nformation)cience 4$3)5,!oring !ith remote sensed digital data at intensive scales andacross acolour spectrum that stretches deep into the infrared regions,

generates avast range of virtual and actual cartographic images. Theirmaers’ primarytraining and interests are often in information technology andits applicationsto geo-referenced data rather than in the conventionalcartographictechniques and operations of pro+ection, compilation andselection, framingand design. The sheer technical !izardry and compellinggraphice*ects of such animated mapping pacages as $oogle 6artho*er an illusionof total synopsis and truthful vision, and can easily blunt criticalresponsesand obscure signi'cant continuities in cartographic culture.7 3nthis chapter3 e#plore some of those continuities, dra!ing on the criticalcartographicliterature to comment on aspects of maps and mappingpractices that caneasily become obscured in our e#citement !ith the technicaladvances thathave made ‘mapping’ such a dynamic contemporary 'eld ofpractice andstudy.Directions in critical cartographyritical study of cartography can proceed from t!o directions8either



through study of the 'nished map – +udging its function,technique, aestheticsand semiotics9 or through a study of mapping processes,conventionally

grouped under the headings of survey, compilation and design."romthe 'rst perspective !e might consider :braham ;rtelius’sTheatrum OrbisTerrarum of (<= 4Fig. 9.15. "unctionally, this !ell-no!nhistorical mapprovided !hat is considered the 'rst modern atlas !ith anopening image$6;$>:?&@ :AB C3)3;A(7Figure 9.1 :braham ;rtelius, Typus Orbis Terrarum, (<= 4DE:Eibrary, facsimile copy5

of the terraqueous globe according to the most recentinformation availableat the time of its maing.< The search for empirical truth isapparent fromthe second edition of the map, made a mere decade later !hen,amongother changes, the shape of )outh :merica is more accurately

portrayed.;rtelius’s selection of individual colours for the continentsanticipates theirrepresentation on succeeding continental maps, and theordered summaryof geographical no!ledge that constitutes the atlas.

Technically, the !orldmap uses ?tolemy’s second pro+ection, e#tending the meridiansto sho! the

!hole southern hemisphere. The map is thus centred on the6quator, !ith aprime meridian running through the :zores, curving thelongitudesto!ards the poles. Eie any pro+ection of the sphere, this hasdistortinge*ects on shape and direction. The oval planisphere is framed!ith cloudsthat represent the element of air, but other!ise it is relatively

free of decoration,



apart from the title cartouche and a lo!er banner containing aEatinsentence attributed to icero. The map o*ers a memorable anduncluttered

image of the globe’s lands and seas to !hich subsequent mapsin the atlascan be related. @et in !ays that are not immediately apparenton the map’ssurface, aesthetics could be said to trump scienti'c no!ledgein thebalancing landmasses north and south of the no!n continents8remnantsof philosophical and religious belief in a harmonious distribution

of landsover the earth’s surface. The semiotics of the map are assigni'cant as itsscienti'c, technical and aesthetic aspects. The te#t at the baseof the map, fore#ample 4!hich in the second edition is reinforced by four otherpassagesfrom icero and )eneca5, reads ‘"or !hat can seem of momentin humana*airs for him !ho eeps all eternity before his eyes and no!sthe scale of the universal !orldF’ 3t reminds us that in the si#teenth centurythe !orldmap played a role beyond that of scienti'c instrument andartistic image9 it!as a moral te#t reminding the vie!er of the insigni'cance ofhuman lifecompared to the vastness of creation.G 3n presenting themapped ‘theatre of the !orld’ 4the title of ;rtelius’s atlas5 as a moral space, themap itself gainsan emblematic quality.H This aspect of mapping can be traced inthe %estbac to the medieval hristian mappae mundi, and is acommon feature of non-%estern cartography too.(= 3ndeed it has never disappearedfrom cartographicculture.



The alternative approach to a critical understanding of thecartographicimage is via an e#amination of survey and compilation, andthese !ill be

my focus here. 2y survey 3 mean the direct collection andproduction of thespatial data to be represented, or ‘mapped’. This includes boththe spatialcalculation used to create a base map, for e#ample a localtraverse or ageodetic measure, and the informational content to berepresented.((

)urvey, or reconnaissance, has traditionally been a 'eld-based

activity,!ithin !hich instrumentation has played a formative role. 2ycompilation 3mean the gathering together of surveyed information at asingle location –$6;$>:?&@ :AB C3)3;A(G

the cartographer’s o0ce, laboratory or studio – and its technicaltransformationinto the 'nished map ob+ect. This approach privileges the

process of mapping over the product, the map, and it has attractedincreasing attentionin recent years, especially as its processes impact upon theno!ledgeclaims that might be made of the resulting map.( ;f particularconcernhave been the various means !hereby no!ledge gained insurvey is transferred

bac to the place of compilation, and !hereby the map itselfentersrecursively into circuits of no!ledge that generate furthermappings.(/

Mapping is itself a spatial process that involves negotiatingvarious aspectsof securing and maintaining the integrity of cartographic dataas theycirculate in space.

Survey



)urvey is an embodied process involving direct, sensual contact!ith thespaces to be mapped. The distanced sense of vision isprivileged here, as the

!ord itself implies 4Eatin8 super-video5, although other sensescan be criticalin speci'c mapping situations, such as the !hole bodyengagementinvolved in plotting precise locations or '#ing trigonometricsurvey pointsin the 'eld, or in negotiating darened spaces for undergroundmapping,!here bodily touch is more signi'cant than sight.(1 &istorically,

there hasbeen a progressive shift a!ay from the individual human bodyas a reliableagent for recording spatial information, to!ards dependenceupon instrumentationas the guarantor of accuracy and ob+ectivity in survey data. Thisisapparent in the use of compass, astrolabe and cross sta*, lateralidade andlens-based instruments, and most recently light-sensitiveremote sensingaids to the human eye. ;ptical instruments not only e#tend thescope of human vision9 historically they have been used to supplant it.

Thus$alileo’s revolutionary mappings of celestial movement andimperfectionson the surface of celestial bodies !ere founded on the capacityof thetelescope lens not only to reveal the surface corrugations of themoon4traced directly onto paper by $alileo’s hand5, but to allo! thesun to burnthe pattern of its dar spots directly onto the paper !ith noapparent humanintervention.( The eighteenth century sa! the radical e#tensionof instrumentationto all aspects of reconnaissance8 the alidade and plane table, as



!ell as accurate geodetics, made possible the production ofnational mapsbased on triangulation, a technique that had been theorizedover == years

earlier by $emma "risius. 3n the same years the mercurybarometer !asused to measure and plot altitude, !hile accurate mapping ofoceanic spaceonly became possible !ith Iohn &arrison’s (<G=s invention ofthe chronometer,!hich allo!ed relatively easy and secure measurement oflongitudeat sea.(7

M;C3A$ M:?)(H

2ut despite increased reliance on instrumentally measuredsurvey, thehuman eye has remained a crucial element of mapping and theuse of maps. 3nto the t!entieth century, the 2ritish :dmiralty requireditso0cers, including the most +unior, to learn accurate setchingas a means

for gathering and recording information about coastlines andharbours,considering dra!ing to be superior to any !ritten account.)etches !ere of t!o types8 the memorial setch, ‘a delineation of a harbour, orany part of acoast, from the memory only, !ithout notes or any immediatesight’, conveying‘the general area of a bay, harbour, or island . . . she!ing that

somesuch places are there’, and the eye-setch, ‘done by the eye atone station,!ithout measuring distances9 and dra!n according to theapparent shapeand dimensions of the land’.(< The invention of photography andthe use of balloons, follo!ed by po!ered Jight, furthered thedisplacement of the

human eye in geographic and topographic mapping. 3n (H(the $erman



;sar Messter invented an airborne automatic camera thatcould 'lm a7=m by .1m strip of the earth’s surface in a sequence ofoverlapping

frames, to be either printed as they !ere or used as ra! visualdata. :erialphotography thus replaced to some degree the epic !or ofassini or6verest in surveying great arcs of meridian from Bunir to?erpignan and2angalore to Belhi respectively.(G ?hotogrammetric survey !asused inmapping great colonial stretches of :frica, :ustralia and

:ntarctica into the(H=s. 2ut even aerial photography and its contemporarysuccessor, remotesensed imaging from orbiting satellites far above the earth’ssurface, havenot !holly replaced the sensing human body. ‘$round truthing’!as crucialfor removing the errors caused to the (H=s 2ritish :ntarctic)urvey bymagnetic deviation, cloud cover and distance distortions inpolar regions.(H

3t remains necessary to ensure the instrumental accuracy ofremote sensedmaps today.3n the mapping process, the increased accuracy andconsistency of surveyresults secured by the replacement of the sensing butsub+ective humanbody by instruments are al!ays threatened by the problems oftransferringrecorded data from the place of survey to the place ofcompilation. Thesetch-map can play a role in this, but as the name suggests, itlacs theauthority of the ‘true’, surveyed map. The issue of securing theaccuracy of mobile no!ledge is beautifully e#pressed in Le Petit Prince bythe "rench



!riter 4and early denizen of aerial survey in "rench colonial:frica5, :ntoinede )aint 6#upKry.= &is eponymous hero Jies from planet toplanet

absorbing moral lessons from their inhabitants and discoveringthe strangehabits of the adult !orld. The most beautiful of all the planetsthe Eittle?rince visits is occupied by a single old man, seated at a desand inscribinginformation into a great boo. &e is a geographer, but he claimsnever tohave seen the beauty of his planet. 2emused, the Eittle ?rince

ass !hy. Thegeographer responds as follo!s8$6;$>:?&@ :AB C3)3;A(7=

‘The geographer is not the one !ho counts the to!ns, rivers,mountains,seas, oceans and deserts. The geographer is much tooimportantto go !andering about. &e never leaves his study. 2ut hereceives

e#plorers. &e interrogates them and notes their records. :nd iftherecords of one of them seem interesting the geographer maesanenquiry into the e#plorer’s moral character.’‘%hy is thatF’‘2ecause a lying e#plorer !ould have catastrophicconsequences forgeography boos Lread maps. The same is true for an e#plorer

!ho isa drunard.’‘&o! comeF’ said the Eittle ?rince.‘2ecause drunards see double. )o the geographer !ould notedo!nt!o mountains !here only one e#ists.’(

3 shall return belo! to this question of securing the truth ofsurveyno!ledge as it travels over space.

areful instrumentation, highly regulated recording procedures,and



learned setching techniques have all been deployed toovercome thesub+ectivity of embodied observation, but its removal is nevercomplete.

artographic instruments themselves have to be tested andcalibrated8 Iamesoo’s ?aci'c navigation !as partly intended to test &arrison’schronometer.:nd during the seven-year survey by ?ierre MKhain and Iean-2aptiste Belambre, begun in (<H to calculate the preciselength of an arc of meridian in order to determine the length of the metre asuniversal measure

4determined ob+ectively as one forty-millionth of the earth’spolar circumference5,‘every page of the e#pedition’s record !as signed by eachmemberof the e#pedition or by outside !itnesses to certify that therecorded measurementshad been performed as described. Ao subsequent changes !erepermitted . . . the signatures radically transformed the status ofthedocument.’

Compilationompilation brings its o!n interruptions to the apparentlysmooth transferof spatial information from the territory to the map. >eJectingan#iety insome measure over these problems, the history of cartographicdesign hasconventionally been told as a transition from art to science, aprogressionfrom the pictorial style that !e associate above all !ith baroquemaps, to theunornamented ‘plain style’ of graphic presentation in theeighteenthcentury. 6vidence for this progression !as to be found in thechangingappearance of maps themselves8 the removal of cartouches,elaborate letteringand e#traneous information and marginalia, and the systematicuse of



M;C3A$ M:?)(7(

non-pictorial cartographic signs. >emoval of such pictorialelements !orsalongside other technical devices8 the graticule and grid as themap’s controllingspatial metrics, the removal of hachures and relief shading infavourof measured contours and spot heights to indicate topographicrelief, theappearance of mathematical and numerical information4compass bearingsand geodetic information, dates of survey and publication,scale, etc.5 in themap’s margins, and the insertion of a formal ey, e#plainingand controllingthe use of colour and symbols. :ll these act as much todemonstrate thescienti'c credentials of the map’s compilation as to provide forits actualuse. 2ut !e no! that many such compilation decisions areinevitably arbitraryor driven by quite other than scienti'c considerations8 !hy

should!ater be coloured blue rather than green or turquoise, orlo!lands colouredgreen or roads redF %hy does the Dnited )tates $eodetic)urvey’s topographicmap indicate schools, but not the religious denomination ofcemeteriesor the population size of municipalities indicated on thetopographic

maps prepared by the "rench 3nstitut $Kographique AationaleF%hy do2ritish ;rdnance )urvey maps mar and di*erentiatearchaeological sites by>oman and $othic letteringF 6ven the remote sensed image is aproduct of colouring choices applied by the map-maer to pi#els receivedby thecartographic studio in numerical, digitized form, as is apparent

!hen one



moves across the virtual surfaces of $oogle 6arth. Thecolouring of the(HH< map of ocean temperatures that made the 6l AiNophenomenon so

graphically compelling !as inspired by the desire for graphicimpact ratherthan scienti'c ob+ectivity.

The intimate relations bet!een mapping and science !ereinitially forgedin the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.6nlightenment passionfor universal measure and ob+ective precision found e#pressionin statistics,

and statistics had their greatest social impact through graphice#pression ingraphs, charts and maps. The thematic map is an invention ofthis historicalmoment. :lthough %illiam ?layfair had pioneered ‘linealarithmetic’, :le#andervon &umboldt is credited !ith producing the 'rst isoline map in(G(< 4Fig. 9.25. "rom the mid-eighteenth century, the shaded,or choroplethmap, !hich uses territorial boundaries as containers for scaledstatisticalobservations, replaced the tradition of recording numbersdirectly ontothe map. )tatistical maps commanded !idespread respect as avehicle fordemonstrating causal connections bet!een spatially correlatedphenomena.:s conventionally told, it !as the medico-statistical mapping ofcholerapatterns in mid-nineteenth-century 6uropean cities, especially6d!inhad!ic’s and Iohn )no!’s (G1=s maps, that secured thescienti'c statusof statistical mapping 4Fig. 9.35. 2ut as Tom Ooch’s historicalanalysis of thisstory insists, disease maps acted as propositions rather thanscienti'c representationsand their scienti'c status should be regarded as such./

Aonetheless,



!hile the topographic map represents the speci'city anduniqueness of $6;$>:?&@ :AB C3)3;A(7

places, the thematic map is a tool for nomothetic thining andthus forsocial planning. Bot maps, for e#ample, !ere especially popularamongmedical doctors committed to the neo-&ippocratic thesis ofenvironmentalcauses for disease, until ?asteur’s !or refocused attention oninternal andbiological causes.Thematic mapping and science

The authority of thematic mapping derives from the statisticalfoundationsof the information it conveys. $iven that such maps aregenerally producedby agencies for the better management of local territories, theproblems of transporting no!ledge are often not as great as they are !ithe#ploratorygeographic or topographic mapping. 2ut thematic mappingsu*ers fromt!o fundamental and often unacno!ledged !eanesses,beyond the obviousmethodological and design problems of interval and scalingchoices."irst, the spatial correlations !hich such maps suggest can tooreadily beinterpreted as causal8 !hat is called the ‘ecological fallacy’. :ne#ample of Figure 9.2 &einrich 2erghaus, !orld map sho!ing isotherms, based on:le#ander von &umboldt, (G1M;C3A$ M:?)(7/

this is the nineteenth-century medical hypothesis that higholive oil consumptionmight be the cause of hiatus hernia, a belief based on anassumedspatial correlation bet!een the incidence of the disease and

olive oil !ithin



the Midi diet. 3t !as Malgaigne’s (G1= Carte de a Francehernieuse 4‘&ernia mapof "rance’5 that undermined the claim, illustrating the incidenceof hernias

among the population of "rench departments by shading at si#intervals thenumbers of people per ‘hernious’ individual !ithin eachadministrativeunit, and then superimposing dietary boundaries to revealpossible causesof the variation.1

The second !eaness of the choropleth map as a scienti'c toolis iconographic8

the choice of colour shading to illustrate interval di*erences. Theconcept of ‘shading’ itself carries po!erful moral connotations9this !asespecially true in an era of self-conscious ‘enlightenment’, !hendarnessand shado! implied ignorance and decay, both physical andmoral. ThusFigure 9.3 holera map of 6#eter, (G/ 42odleian Eibrary, ;#ford5$6;$>:?&@ :AB C3)3;A

(716d!ard Puinn’s (G/= !istorica "tas used a similar device to:braham;rtelius’s parting clouds to surround his images of the no!n!orld atdi*erent stages in human history. 2ut in Puinn’s case theyreveal thedarness of ignorance being pushed progressively aside by theon!ard

march of civilization through the ages. ;n nineteenth-centurythematicmaps, colour shading consistently used dar tones to registerfailure inthe spatial narrative of progress. Thus "rench statisticalcartographythroughout the century, in maps of educational standards orpoverty andsocial provision, regularly divided the country into t!o parts8 an

‘enlightened’north !here lighter shades dominated, and an ‘obscure’ "rance



south of a line from )an Malo to $eneva, !hose failures !eredimlyvisible through the cartographic gloom. : similar use of shadingand the

ecological fallacy is to be found on !hat today appeare#traordinarychoropleth maps published in scienti'c geographical +ournals toillustratecorrelations bet!een the distribution of ‘climatic energy’ andthat of ‘civilization’ 4Fig. 9.#5.3f statistical mapping lost favour among medical researchers inthe later

nineteenth century, its popularity among social planners and‘hygienists’peaed in the early years of the t!entieth century, as the‘civilization’maps suggest. )tatistical survey and mapping of !hat !eredeemed culturaltraits, such as language, dialect and custom, !ere central to thearguments of supporters of vo$ and nation in determining theterritorialFigure 9.4 6lls!orth &untington, %orld isoline map sho!ing levels of ‘civilization’ 4%ainsprings o& Civii'ation, (H19 author’s copy5M;C3A$ M:?)(7

e#tent of the unifying $erman >eich in the (G=s and (G7=s.

"rom the!or of social statisticians and statistical cartographers such as"rKdKric Ee?lay in "rance, &enry Mayhe! in 2ritain, and &einrich 2erghausin

$ermany, and :merican geological and soil surveyors such as Iohn %esley?o!ell or 6ugene %. &ilgard, emerged the idea of mapping as acriticaltool of state policy in the ‘?rogressive 6ra’ at the turn of thet!entiethcentury. The concept of the survey !as transferred from thee#plorationand inventory of colonized lands to hidden features of

metropolitan societies.



3n the minds of social philosophers such as ?atric $eddes, auni'edsurvey of the physical and social characteristics of a regioncould provide

an ecological portrait of community in place, a foundation for itsrationalplanning, and a stimulus to the civic virtue and communityparticipationof its people.

The survey did not require e#ploration of unno!n spaces, butan‘archaeology’ of interconnected relations !ithin a place thatcould be

revealed by the very process of mapping. )uch mapping !ouldmostappropriately be undertaen by the community itself, !oringunderinstruction, and in the process contributing to the furtherconsolidation of civic virtues. ?ublic display of the resulting maps !ould furtherthis goal.

Thus, in the Dnited )tates, various states and counties in the(H=s, especiallyin Ae! 6ngland and the Mid-%est, encouraged schoolchildren toparticipate in local surveys that !ould reveal the true state oftheir community,especially regarding its physical and moral heath. These mapshadthe e*ect of moral self-regulation, as in the e#ample of apublicly displayed)pring'eld, Massachusetts survey map that Jashed (=coloured lightsindicating the distribution of babies born in (H(/, distinguishingbet!eengreen lights for homes !here the birth !as registered, and redfor unregisteredbirths 4presumably out of !edloc5. 3n 2ritain, the surveymovementpeaed in the (H/=s !ith the recruitment of schoolchildren fromacross6ngland and %ales to map the use of every parcel of land,

returning the



results to Eondon !here they !ere compiled onto topographicbase mapsand coloured to reveal national patterns of land use. Beep redsand purples

dramatically revealed the octopus spra!l of great cities such asEondon!hose suburban anonymity !as supposedly threateningtraditional civicvirtues7 4see ?late 75.

The authority of survey mapping peaed in the post-!ar yearsof !elfarestateplanning and modernist social engineering, !hich dependedheavily

on map overlay techniques both to analyse social patterns and‘problems’and to develop persuasive arguments for their solution. The‘plan’, in !hichthe map played as signi'cant a role as the !ritten te#t, becamea centralinstrument of policy. 6ven as comprehensive spatial planningcame underserious criticism in the late (H7=s and early (H<=s, the value of the cartographic techniques upon !hich it depended !asstrongly reas-$6;$>:?&@ :AB C3)3;A(77

serted in ecological landscape design. The inJuential )cottish!riter 3anMc&arg recommended the use of polygonal overlays to connectvariouslandscape features8by starting !ith bedroc geology and then sur'cial geology, and

thenreinterpreting these to reveal ground!ater hydrology, youe#plainphysiography and also sur'cial hydrology. This then leads youinevitablyto soils, !hich leads you to plants, !hich leads you to animals,!hich can lead you to land use. . . . every one of these steps isin facteither correcting or reinforcing.<

Mc&arg is commonly credited !ith pioneering the cartographictechniques



no! computerized !ithin $eographical 3nformation )cience. $3)dra!s upon and synthesizes a range of spatial representations –the aerialphotograph, remote sensed image and topographic map – as

!ell as thematicspatial statistics to generate comple# overlying patterns,enhanced andmanipulated by the computer. The resulting images haveenormous graphicpo!er, reshaping our vision and understanding of the !orld andourcapacity to intervene in its material and social processes.ombined !ith the

capacity to transmit data instantaneously and manipulate it inreal time onthe ? screen, !e have hugely increased the cartographicillusion of synopticvision and action at a distance 4the magic of maps5. 2ut !eneed toremain as alert as ever to the persuasive po!er of these ne!ercartographicimages. The !idely reproduced A:): image of ‘)paceship6arth’ that 3 havereferred to already in these essays, and !hose authority stemsfrom itsphotographic ‘realism’, has been read universally butuncritically as a signof a vulnerable globe threatened by anthropogenicenvironmental crisis,and thus as a moral mapping of human treatment of a nurturingmotherearth. 3n fact the image itself contains no evidence thatnecessarily supportssuch a claim. The :pollo photograph, lie the nineteenth-century diseasemap or a t!enty-'rst-century $3) image, is propositional asmuch as it isrepresentational.G

Mapping and circulating no!ledge The story of ho! the !hole-earth image !as obtained by the:pollo astronauts,



returned to earth, circulated globally, interpreted and gainedagencyin the discourses of environmentalism and one-!orldglobalization,

e#empli'es many of the continuities in mapping as a spatialprocess.H 3n his!or on the maing and circulation of scienti'c no!ledge,2runo Eatourhas used the term ‘immutable mobile’ to characterize thosematerial agentsthat permit scienti'c discourse to sustain its claims of empirical!arrantyand repeatable truth in the absence of eye!itness evidence./=

The map is aM;C3A$ M:?)(7<

perfect e#emplar of the immutable mobile8 a container ofinformation gatheredat speci'c locations, returned to a ‘centre of calculation’, andthenplaced once more into circulation as a vehicle and instrument of scienti'cno!ledge and further hypotheses. The entire history of

cartography can betold as a history of struggle to realize such a status for the map.

Thuslaudius ?tolemy, !hose tables of locational coordinatesintroduced modernmapping to >enaissance 6urope, may never have dra!n actualmaps. &isboo gave su0cient information for a silled reader to constructa pro+ection

and plot the coordinates necessary to produce the maps fromhis data.

Te#t and tabulated 'gures are far more easily and accuratelycopied andtransported than a set of dra!n maps. )ecuring theimmutability of themobile has been a constant obsession of cartography. 3t isfundamental tothe map’s claim to be more than an imaginative picture. 3ndeed,

cartographers



have actually dra!n upon the authority of cartographicprocedureto grant legitimacy to !hat !ere in fact complete fabrications.

Thus the

si#teenth-century "rench cosmographer :ndrK Thevet plottedlines of latitude and longitude around maps of completely illusoryislands./( )uchcharlatanry reveals the ultimate impossibility of thecartographic conceit.

The only true map is the territory itself, as Eouis 2orges longago pointed out.

The search to secure immutable mobility for the map reveals

anotherfeature8 cartography’s prosthetic quality. The map is one ofthose instrumentsthat serves to e#tend the capacities of the human body. Eie thetelescope or microscope, it allo!s us to see at scales impossibleforthe naed eye to see and !ithout moving the physical bodyover space. Thethematic map reveals the presence of phenomena that arebeyond our normalbodily senses, as for e#ample a trend surface map of propertyvalues orof air pollution. The map also has a po!erful recursive quality,at once amemory device and a foundation for pro+ective action. This isimmediatelyapparent in 6uropean mapping in the ‘age of discovery’, !herethe map !asat once a necessary starting point for the e#ploration processand a principaloutcome of that process.

These prosthetic and circulatory aspects of mapping are truealso for thesocial survey, and they remain so for the most technicallyadvanced mappingsof today. 3t is these features of the mapping process that maesit sucha fertile and po!erful epistemology in no!ing and

representing the !orld.



The map is at once empirically rooted and imaginativelyliberated and liberating.Ao spaces can be controlled, inhabited or representedcompletely. 2ut

the map permits the illusion of such possibilities. Mapping is acreativeprocess of inserting our humanity into the !orld and seizing the!orld forourselves. This is !hy today the boundaries bet!een the artand science of mapping, so long and so arbitrarily surveyed, charted andpoliced, areincreasingly smudged and faded, and !hy the imaginative and

pro+ectivepotential of mappings has become so vitally present incontemporary life.$6;$>:?&@ :AB C3)3;A(7G

Moving Maps-Cosgrove

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