1. The Politics Of Maps: Mapping The West Bank Barrier
- Author:
- Christine Leuenberger
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Brown Journal of World Affairs
- Abstract:
- Maps and mapmaking have traditionally enjoyed the prestige of privileged and objective sources of knowledge. Within the geographic community and the public at large, it was assumed that the natural world was observable and could be rendered in pictorial form. Cartography is therefore not like psychoanalysis. It does not deal with internal phenomena hardly accessible to direct observation. Land and cityscapes do not need to be inferred or deduced. They are presumed to be susceptible to the scientific method in a most unproblematic fashion. Geographers, cartographers, historians of science, and science studies scholars, however, have increasingly questioned maps as objective representations. They have analyzed the social production of maps and maps’ link to society, culture, and geopolitics. They have found that mapmakers inevitably present a particular vantage point, one tied to certain social interests, values, and practices.
- Topic:
- Geopolitics, Occupation, Settler Colonialism, and Cartography
- Political Geography:
- Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and West Bank