This all depends on how you understand ‘map’, surely, and how the particular map in question is performed? Gregory et al in the 2009 Dictionary of Human Geography describe a map as “a representation of all or a portion of the planet or some other vast environment”, offering further detail through examples such as Harley and Woodward (1987, p. xvi) - ‘graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes or events in the human world’. The most important parts of these interpretations are surely a) that a map is a representation and b) not all maps are graphic.
If you check out the recent CFP on this list regarding ANT, for instance, it quotes Alcadipani and Hassard (2010, p. 4/5) on “how ‘ordering effects’ … are performed into being”. The third important component following on from a) and b) above is c) that a map is a representation that performs ordering effects into being and so axiomatically it alters reality – all maps alter reality by the ordering effect of being maps.
You can carry the ANT analysis further in looking at how the performativity of maps “describes the process of establishing relations between heterogeneous materials of humans and non-humans”, and is also relevant to the durability of the map and its necessarily temporary nature – the imperial map of an African country brought into being some hard and fast socio-cultural and politico-economic effects that substantially changed the reality of an area they performed a description of. As soon as the imperial moment that drove their creation had passed, however, other maps took over which performed to a change reality.
Just as a last thought, I was reading the series of pieces on Steve Jobs and Apple that came out this week as a result of his resignation. When Jobs and others brought out the Apple II series in the late 1970s, surely what they did (among other things) was to create a non-graphic map that permanently altered reality? A PC/laptop/ipad is surely a supreme example of a non-graphic mechanism that ‘represents a vast environment’, ‘facilitates a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes or events in the human world’?
Jon
Dr Jon Cloke
Lecturer/Research Associate
Geography Department
Loughborough University
Loughborough LE11 3TU
Office: 01509 228193
Mob: 07984 813681
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