Crisis & Counter-Mapping
What kind of mapping challenges dominant power structures and official state maps?
Counter-mapping
The idea that maps don’t just reflect the world but actively shape political and social reality —> they actively create political claims like “this is mine and that is yours.” What is this idea called?
Cartopolitics
This author argues that maps don’t just represent the world, they fabricate it, and that borders are not fixed lines but ongoing political practices. They also introduce the shift from Atlas to Hermes.
Houtum van, H. (2024). From Atlas to Hermes, towards a relational mapping of borders and migration
Breaking large mapping tasks into tiny pieces completed by many volunteers.
Microtasking
When we stare at maps for so long that we forget someone drew the lines (that it has been constructed) and start believing the map is reality, this is called what?
Cartohypnosis
This editorial insists maps are never neutral and introduces the “Three Cs: Critical, Counter, Cartography.”
Halder, S. & B. Michael (2018), Editorial - this is not an atlas.
*Double Points**
The use of real-time data to create dynamic maps during emergencies, providing a "third dimension" to events as they unfold.
Live Crisis Mapping
Instead of showing migrants as people, migration maps often show them as what?
Arrows
This reading analyzes Hurricane Katrina survivors’ hand-drawn maps and introduces the idea of “mapping the gaps.”
Henderson, K. (2011), Mind Maps, Memory, and Relocation after Hurricane Katrina.
The use of real-time data to create dynamic maps during emergencies, providing a "third dimension" to events as they unfold.
Live Crisis Mapping
In Katrina, survivors drew maps that showed schools, clinics, and grocery stores that were missing. What did Henderson call this?
mapping the "gaps"
*Double Points*
This author analyzes the 2003 Paris heat wave, showing how elderly people died in top-floor apartments under zinc roofs, and argues that public health maps missed “vertical poverty.”
Fortun, K. (2015), Bodies of/and Knowledge
are you excited for the weekend?
yesssss
In Katrina, survivors navigated using landmarks like a pool hall rather than street grids. This reflects what kind of knowledge?
Situated knowledge (or indexical knowledge)
This author explains how volunteers used Ushahidi after the Haiti earthquake, describes people as “human sensors,” and calls crisis mapping a global “crowd-sourced nervous system.”
Meier, P. (2012), Crisis mapping in action. How Open Source Software and Global Volunteer Networks Are Changing the World, One Map at a Time