Lukewarm off the presses, a tome chock full of lofty thoughts on maps and mapping. The blurb about Rethinking Maps, edited by Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin, and Chris Perkins (Routledge 2009), sez:
Maps are changing. They have become important and fashionable once more. Rethinking Maps brings together leading researchers to explore how maps are being rethought, made and used, and what these changes mean for working cartographers, applied mapping research, and cartographic scholarship. It offers a contemporary assessment of the diverse forms that mapping now takes and, drawing upon a number of theoretic perspectives and disciplines, provides an insightful commentary on new ontological and epistemological thinking with respect to cartography.
A useful overview of what typically gets called “critical cartography,” with a few other voices of reason mixed in.
Denis Wood and I contributed a chapter, a comic with plentiful notes (for those who can’t figure out the pictures). I linked our chapter below, but it works much better as a printed comic. I have about 10 paper copies, and can mail them to the first 10 people that email me (jbkrygier@owu.edu). Include a mailing address!
Debates rage, and tussles erupt, over the question…
Serious enough, I guess, to be included in a tome of high academic scribblings.
The editors have made the introductory and concluding chapters available as PDFs. Those too are linked below.
The book is expensive ($129.95!) and sales will mostly be to libraries. Check a copy out of your favorite library (or ask for it via inter-library loan) or email the author of a chapter you are interested in and ask if they are willing to share a copy.
Chapters in Rethinking Maps include:
1. Thinking about Maps (360k PDF) (Rob Kitchin, Chris Perkins and Martin Dodge)
2. Rethinking Maps and Identity: Choropleths, Clines and Biopolitics (Jeremy W. Crampton)
3. Rethinking Maps from a more-than-human Perspective: Nature-society, Mapping, and Conservation Territories (Leila Harris and Helen Hazen)
4. Web mapping 2.0 (Georg Gartner)
5. Modelling the Earth: A Short History (Michael F. Goodchild)
6. Theirwork: the Development of Sustainable Mapping (Dominica Williamson and Emmet Connolly)
7. Cartographic Representation and the Construction of Lived Worlds: Understanding Cartographic Practice as Embodied Knowledge (Amy Propen)
8. The 39 Steps and the Mental Map of Classical Cinema (Tom Conley)
9. The Emotional Life of Maps and Other Visual Geographies (Jim Craine and Stuart Aitken)
10. Playing with Maps (Chris Perkins)
11. Ce n’est pas le Monde [This is not the world] (2mb PDF) (John Krygier and Denis Wood)
Here is an easier to read PDF version of Ce N’est Pas le Monde.
12. Mapping Modes, Methods and Moments: A Manifesto for Map Studies (556k PDF) (Martin Dodge, Chris Perkins and Rob Kitchin)
I returned in June from 7 weeks abroad, including 6 weeks in Dushanbe, Tajikistan and other parts Tajikistani. I have been trying to figure out a decent way of making a personal “tour” map of Dushanbe, but I find Google “My Maps” to be actually somewhat awkward.
I’m an old-school cut-and-paste fan, and what I should probably do is actually blow up and print out parts of Dushanbe, physically cut and paste photos and text, then scan the results to post online. Clunky, I know, but the technology of cut-and-paste is already in my grasp, while computer mapping to achieve the same visual results would be harder for me.
Anyway, your blog here is an excellent resource. For example, your post on making personalized markers for Gmaps. Thank you.
St. Blaize… huh. My middle name (with out the St.) after my grandfather Blaizius.
As to your actual question, I think your cut+paste idea is better than trying to get My Maps to do what you
want. Not because I am against fancy web mapping, but because you will come up with something unique
rather than another web map that looks like every other web map.
Consider doing this all digital: use a free graphics program (like Seashore [mac] or Wimp [windows]). Find
digital maps on the web and cut and paste those in a file with your photos, and also add text annotations.
A map collage, so to speak. Save as a jpg, gif, or png and stick it on the web.
Thanks, John. Unfortunately, when I say “cut and paste” I mean with actual scissors and a glue stick, rather than via a graphics program. And the problem I have is the scale: i.e. the amount of information I have to coordinate would require me to print so many photos (which I would have to array somehow around a map part) that I would bankrupt myself buying printer ink.
What your suggestion means is that I really actually do need to learn how to use a graphics program of some sort. If I do get it sorted out, I’ll be sure to send you a link to the finished project.
I encourage you to take a look at how we’ve been creating poverty maps showing Chicago neighborhoods where poverty, poorly performing schools and youth violence indicate a need for volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.
Our maps are part of an on-going campaign to help existing programs get volunteers, dollars, ideas, etc while helping community groups work together with businesses, hospitals, universities, and faith groups in the same neighborhoods, to form new programs where none now exist.
See http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com and http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net
Do you know of others using maps like this to influence philanthropy and volunteer involvement in multiple locations?