The 5Ps, a mnemonic for map historians

Last Thursday night (or more correctly Friday morning, ca. 2 a.m.), it occurred to me that one way to simplify and easily communicate the questions that map historians need to ask about mapping, in a new and exciting way, is by three p-words:

Place
People
Purpose

These three aspects of historical analysis are all bound together by circulation (in addition to the consumption and production of maps).

Yesterday (today is Saturday) I announced this trio in a rather offhand way as part of my presentation to Diana Lange and Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann’s online workshop on Typologies of East Asian Maps in a Global Perspective. Some of the other participants liked it. Later today, after the close of the workshop, I returned to the trio, to see if it still stands up when tested. In doing so, I realized (d’oh!) that there were three missing elements that I need to add. Six Ps lacks the succinctness of the three Ps. Moreover, the new sixth is really “strategy,” so perhaps I should refer to these as the 5PS, i.e., five words starting with P and one with S. That twist helps make it an effective mnemonic!

Here it is:

The 5PS (i.e., 5×P+1×S)
What Map Historians Must Consider

Processes: consumption, circulation, production

Practices: the specific things people do to produce, circulate, and consume maps, from making to reading

— — — — — — — — — — —

Places: all the places (or kinds of place) between which the map(s) circulate and where mapping practices take place

People: all those (individuals or kinds of people) who engage in the mapping practices (also Participants)

Purposes: to what ends do people engage in mapping practices

— — — — — — — — — — —

Strategies: the representational strategies—graphic, verbal, numeric, tectonic—used to form and situate maps within a sea of ever circulating material and immaterial signification.

I’m going to leave this up on the blog, for a while. Please let me know what you think. If it holds up, I’ll likely use it as the foundation for a chapter in the next book (Mapping: Processes and Histories), whenever I can get to it.