Eight Considerations for Reading Maps
/Many years ago, I developed a list of things for students to pay attention to in interpreting maps. I stopped using them in classes as I began to stress materiality of maps. as a means to access the patterns of circulation. But I did a guest class today for Anne Knowles’ senior seminar in historical geography, who all made the trek southwards from Orono to Portland, and the considerations proved useful. So, I provide here the list I last edited in 2009.
The Two Goals of Cartographic Analysis
(1) to understand maps as texts and to elucidate their meanings within spatial discourses;
(2) to understand the contribution of spatial discourses, and of cartographic representations in particular, to influencing, shaping, or determining spatial practices.
Therefore, the basic principle of reading maps is that each particular map must always be related its larger discourse.
What NOT to do …
When you first look at a map, try not to think about the map’s geographical accuracy. Set aside questions like, “just how good is this map?” Accuracy might become an issue in reading a map as a cultural text, but likely not; asking questions about a map’s accuracy will only distract and hobble the student!
Rather, try and look at the whole, and think about the following in terms of the whole!
Eight Considerations for Reading Maps
N.B. two of these considerations (difference and structure) are extensions of ideas presented by Wood and Fels; others derive/borrow from Hall.
Wood, Denis, and John Fels. “Designs on Signs: Myth and Meaning in Maps.” Cartographica 23, no. 3 (1986): 54-103. Reprinted in Denis Wood with John Fels, The Power of Maps (New York: Guilford, 1992), 95-142.
Hall, Stuart. “The Determination of News Photographs.” Working Papers in Cultural Studies 3 (1972): 53-88. Reprinted with modifications in The Manufacture of News: A Reader, ed. Stanley Cohen and Jock Young (Beverly Hills, Calif.: SAGE Publications, 1973), 176-90.
(1) Basic Signs Employed
Q. What was included?
Q. How were spatial features symbolized, as points, lines, areas, or volumes?
Q. How were spatial relationships construed?
(2) Difference
Wood & Fels asked what signs are in a map, but not defined in a legend, to elucidate those symbols, and so spatial concepts, which are so fundamental to cartographic discourse that they do not need to be explicated. By extension, we should interrogate any variations of representation across a map:
Q. What was excluded (and which might reasonably have been included)?
Q. What features are represented differently or variably across the map?
(3) Structure
Wood & Fels also asked how the symbols in a legend are structured, to elucidate those features deemed to be most important for constructing the map’s meaning. By extension, we can identify patterns of similarity and hierarchies:
Q. What were the categories of representation?
Q. What were the hierarchies of representation?
(4) Frame
Q. How was the space delineated and delimited?
Q. Why this particular portion of space; why not another?
(5) Read the Text!
Q. What did the map’s maker say about the map? How would such comments be read and understood?
(6) The Map’s Specific Textual Location
Q. What further, compound meaning accrued to a map located within a larger text such as a book or atlas?
(7) Specific Allegorical Meaning
Q. What iconological meanings are embedded in specifically allegorical components on maps?
(8) Adherence to Discursive Conventions
Q. To what degree did the map adhere to, or break from, established discursive conventions?
