Countermapping

Countermapping refers to the use of cartographic tools and maps to correct or denounce injustice. It is usually carried out in opposition to maps or spatialities produced by powerful interests, be they from the state, the private sector, or elsewhere. Countermapping's uniqueness comes from its focus on explicit politics, advocacy, and activism. In geography, countermapping has most often been associated with questions and struggles over land use and conservation. Use of the term in the discipline began to pick up rapidly after the mid 1990s, with Nancy Peluso's work on countermapping in Indonesian forests. Despite the recent emergence of the term in Anglophonic geography, one could trace a countermapping tradition at least as far back as the Geographical Expeditions of William Bunge in the 1970s.

Rather than a subfield in its own right, it is better to conceive of countermapping as a social practice or tactic used by many different groups dealing with a variety of issues. Several mapping tendencies are emerging under the rubric of countermapping. These include the following:

PPGIS (public participation geographic information systems): As the name implies, this usually consists of methods of carrying out GIS-based projects that emphasize community input and participation.

Indigenous cartography: This is the remapping of territories according to indigenous concepts and uses. These maps have been useful in land claims struggles vis-à-vis government authorities.

Activist or radical cartography: This includes the creation of maps by and for social movements to analyze problematics, form alliances, or design strategies toward a campaign. Many projects of Activist Cartography are carried out by critical artists experimenting with the tool of mapping.

These three variations of countermapping should not be understood as subfields with their own canons. Rather, they are more like areas of focus for countermapping practitioners, and each has its own trajectory and referential projects. Additionally, these three ways of engaging the practice of countermapping are not exhaustive. They are mentioned to stress the fact that countermapping is not a set of unrelated sporadic experiments at using maps to “fight the powers that be.” Countermapping in and of itself is becoming a community and network of practices, helping spread the use of maps and cartographic tools with aims of social justice.

Countermapping can include all kinds of cartographic forms, even standard ones. PPGIS, for example, often uses regular GIS representations to carry out its goals. Usually, though, counter-mapping also implies a critique of much of cartographic logic as such. Cartography in this sense is understood as a state-supported technology that often helps produce the situations of injustice against which countermapping is being deployed. This notion becomes clear in examples of indigenous and activist cartography. Both of these areas are developing innovative ways of presenting cartographic information, helping challenge traditional notions of the “map” or even what constitutes a map. Additionally, the tools used by countermapping projects run the full gamut of the imaginable, from the latest GIS software and locative media to sketch maps drawn by amateurs, imagination being the key limit.

Frequently, countermapping is practiced at the margins of geography departments and universities. This is especially the case with activist cartography, where small mapping groups carry out a project, often without formal cartographic [Page 596]training. Countermapping is a growing phenomenon, increasingly brought up within the field of geography and increasingly used to support community struggles. With the spread of accessible geographic and mapping tools, especially through the Internet, it seems that countermapping will only spread further in the near future.

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