Mapping places
From Geography
Mapping places as seen by Brian Harley
Throughout history, maps have represented and shaped geographical knowledge about the world. Although maps may appear to reflect reality, locating factual information in increasingly scientific ways, many critics argue that all maps are result of a social construct. Rather than represent the world as is really is, maps are always partial and infused with different meanings. Maps never unmediated representations of the world and even the most apparently scientific and technologically advanced map is not value free. A maps mode of representation and what it represents reveal the intimate connections between power and geographical knowledge.
Harley states that maps are a tool of imperialism as much as warships and guns are. Maps are used to claim new territories and helped to shape imaginative geographies of empire by representing territories as ‘blank spaces’ over which imperial rule could be imposed.
Many attempts were made to decolonise mapping. For example, Jane Jacobs had written about the design of an Aboriginal art trail in Brisbane and the ways in which the conceptual template for the trail is based upon creative appropriation of the map, that over-determined signifier of colonialism. An aboriginal map of the art trail is juxtaposed with a topographic map of the same place, and different mappings aslo appear in the artwork itself. Jacobs suggest that this creative re-appropriation of mapping parodies colonial maps and destabilises the power inherent with them
