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Everything about Counter-mapping

Mapping by communities to contest state maps

Counter-mapping is the creation of maps that challenge "dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals". Counter-mapping is used in multiple disciplines to reclaim colonized territory. Counter-maps are prolific in indigenous cultures, "counter-mapping may reify, reinforce, and extend settler boundaries even as it seeks to challenge dominant mapping practices; and still, counter-mapping may simultaneously create conditions of possibility for decolonial ways of representing space and place." The term came into use in the United States when Nancy Peluso used it in 1995 to describe the commissioning of maps by forest users in Kalimantan, Indonesia, to contest government maps of forest areas that undermined indigenous interests. The resultant counter-hegemonic maps strengthen forest users' resource claims. There are numerous expressions closely related to counter-mapping: ethnocartography, alternative cartography, mapping-back, counter-hegemonic mapping, deep mapping and public participatory mapping. Moreover, the terms critical cartography, subversive cartography, bio-regional mapping, and remapping are sometimes used interchangeably with counter-mapping, but in practice encompass much more. Wikipedia →

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

  1. Read the overview: Counter-mappingA 5-minute orientation
  2. Skim a recent paper: Counter-mapping the techno-hype in migration researchInfluential work since 2022
  3. Pick up a classic book: Proceedings of the Alaskan Boundary TribunalThe most-reprinted book on the subject
  4. Read the landmark paper: Mapping the Operation of the DMT Continuous Flow CCN CounterCited 308 times
  5. Go sideways: Participatory GISA closely related topic
  6. Go sideways: Critical cartographyA closely related topic

📖 Definitions

No dictionary entry for this exact phrase.

🗂️ The subject at a glance

  1. Origins
  2. Development
  3. Counter-mapping as governance
  4. Types of counter-mapping
  5. Criticisms

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

🆕 Influential since 2022

📚 Books worth reading

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

🔗 Related topics