What is a Map?
One way to read maps is to see them as representing reality. From this perspective, mapmakers simply record their surroundings to the best of their ability. But there is another way to read maps, too. The second way, described below, allows historians to use maps to see how people once thought about the world. Read the quote below and then see if you can find an example of what the author is saying in the maps provided.
There is, however, an alternative answer to the question 'What is a map?' For historians an equally appropriate definition of a map is 'a social construction of the world expressed through the medium of cartography.' Far from holding up a simple mirror of nature that is true or false, maps redescribe the world¡ªlike any other document¡ªin terms of relations of power and of cultural practices, preferences, and priorities. What we read on a map is as much related to an invisible world and to ideology as it is to phenomena seen and measured in the landscape.
Source: Harley, J.B. The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. 35.
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Source: Nova totius terrarum orbis geographica ac hydrographica tabula. 1680. John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. |
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Source: Cover of the Official Road Map of New Mexico (1936). New Mexico State Highway Department, Santa Fe. In David Buisseret. Ed. From Sea Charts to Satellite Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. |
Questions:
1. What does the author of the passage mean when he says that maps are as much about power relations and cultural practices?
2. Examine the map from 1680. What do you think the illustrations along the border are supposed to represent?
3. Examine the map cover from a 1936 New Mexico highway map. Apply the author¡¯s argument to this image.
