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In April 1953 in a letter to his publisher (L 168) J.R.R. Tolkien writes: "Maps are worrying me. One at least (which would then have to be rather large) is absolutely essential." Why were maps so important to Tolkien? How were the maps produced that graced the first publication of The Lord of the Rings? And how do these maps differ from Tolkien's imagined worlds? Every map tells a story and different maps fulfil varying functions. How are these functions linked to the acts of creating a world, exploring its geographical extent and content, getting an overview or presenting the world to a group of readers? While examining the relationship between Tolkien's sketches, maps and his writing it becomes clear that J.R.R. Tolkien was too deeply immersed in his world to produce an overview map. The act of exploring and collating material for a story produces a cognitive collage. By contrast, the act of presenting the geography of the final story demands a map. Mapping imagined worlds requires detachment from the richness of the described geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how mental mapping can be used as a critical methodology for feminist migration studies. In a case study of female marriage migrants who settle in rural areas in South Korea from other Asian countries, I attempt to develop mental mapping to supplement verbal interviews. Mental maps of hometowns and current neighborhoods drawn by my interviewees represent their geographical imaginations and complex identity negotiations that mirror the change in their social locations. In order to understand multilayered meanings embedded in the images and the way in which power relations existent between the researcher and the researched affect the map production, I suggest a critical reading of the maps. The article shows how a reflexive and intertextual reading makes a difference to the interpretation of the maps. It argues that the maps are not mere reflections of the women's cognition, but rather socially constructed texts through which their desires, emotions, feelings and internal contradictions are expressed and negotiated. My research suggests that mental mapping, if ethically performed and critically evaluated, has potential as a means to convey the unheard voices of the marginalized to diverse audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the social and political importance of the mapping of the Mexican nation-state. Topics include national defense, place naming, symbolism, and national identity.

The article explores the ways in which early-19th-century Americans understood the expedition of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark through an examination of the consumption of early publications of the explorers' journals. It is argued that such a study provides more accurate information on the expedition's meaning to Americans than modern-day publications, particularly maps that outline the route.

This methodological paper sets out a definition of, and a vision for, a deep map. A deep map is defined as a platform and a means of expressing historical narratives, and seeks to move beyond the current situation, where time is presented as an attribute of space, and space as an attribute of text. It sets out a conceptual design of a deep map which brings all three together, allowing articulation of a narrative in the history of one denomination of US religion, the Unitarian church in Indianapolis in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interdisciplinary team of researchers were challenged to create a model of a deep map during a three-day charette at the NEH Institute on Spatial Narratives and Deep Maps. Through a reflexive process of ingesting data, probing for fruitful research questions, and considering how a deep map might be used by different audiences, we created a wireframe model of a deep map and explored how it related to spatial narratives. We explored the tension between interfaces for exploratory and structured views of data and sources, and devised a model for the intersections between spatial narratives and deep maps. The process of creating wireframes and prototype screens-and more importantly, the discussions and debates they initiated-helped us understand the complex requirements for deep maps and showed how a deep map can support a humanistic interpretation of the role of space in historical processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial turn within the humanities and need for data richness has led to the re-conceptualisation and exploration of maps as 'deep maps.' Building narratives of place is becoming increasingly contingent on data landscapes as opposed to the physical landscapes within which they are situated. To make the assumption that GIS can form the basis for deep maps is to privilege the spatial dimension (and spatial data) over all others. We have sought in our experimentation to take a more open, balanced approach as to how a deep map might be organised as a way of learning/reflecting on what elements a framework should contain. Our subject matter here necessitated attention to the challenges and potentialities of deep mapping 'things deemed religious.' We found spatial navigation to be useful for visualizing physical and metaphysical linkages, integrating the geographical portions of our spatial narrative as well as organizing thoughts off the map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central Europe is as much invented as the continent of Europe, and as any human concept for that matter. But when people subscribe to and act in accordance with a concept of this kind, it becomes reality, that is, part of social reality. This essay, in an interdisciplinary manner, traces the origins and the functioning of Central Europe as a concept through the lens of cartography, history and culture. From the vantage of intellectual and political discourse, the usually nebulous idea of Central Europe was a reply to the disappearance of empires in this region after 1918, and to the rise of totalitarianism in 1938-48. After the period of "occlusion" during the communist years (when the concept was preserved among Central European émigré scholars in the West as "East Central Europe"), it resurfaced in the 1980s as a cultural-cum-political banner, under which refusniks and dissident intellectuals proclaimed their protest, seeing the Soviet bloc countries as different from the Soviet Union, then identified with Eastern Europe. In the postcommunist 1990s Central Europe flourished as a cultural and political concept, but following the 2004-07 eastward enlargement of the European Union, its significance was reduced to culture only. Time will show whether any need for Europa Centralis may still remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Soziale Systeme is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay examines the cultural significance of "ambulatory maps" in the Atlantic world between 1700 and 1800. Comparing stationary and portable maps, the essay in particular explores the emergent genre of the commercial pocket map. As "things-in- motion," pocket maps occupied a unique place in American material life. Used for mapping people's transits while at the same time being objects in transit, pocket maps constituted a unique visual and literary experience that affected early American engagements with space and spatial ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses map-based mortgage risk-rating techniques used by the U.S. Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in the 1930s. Particular focus is given to attitudes towards these techniques and policies within the FHA itself. It is suggested that while historians have criticized these techniques as discriminatory, FHA officials believed that they were developing an objective decision-making aid and computational tool. Particular focus is given to the development of the fields of real estate, social science, and urban science. Topics discussed include mortgage underwriting, appraiser Frederick Babcock, human ecology, and quantitative data.

More and more museums all over Europe are discovering migration as a topic for exhibitions. These exhibitions on migration question notions of objectivity or of European universalism. This article looks at a broad range of recent exhibitions and museums that address the topic of migration. Taking into consideration their varying scope and institutional context, this text argues that exhibitions on migration tell several stories at once: Firstly, they present stories of migration in a certain city, region or nation, and within a particular period of time. For this purpose, curators make extensive use of maps -- with the peculiar effect that these maps blur what seems to be the clear-cut entity of reference of the museum itself or the exhibition. To a stronger degree than other phenomena that turn into museal topics, 'migration' unveils the constructed character of geographic or political entities such as the nation or the European Union. It shows how, hidden below the norm of settledness, mobilities are and have always been omnipresent in and fundamental for European societies. Secondly and related to this, exhibitions on migration add a new chapter to the meta-narrative of museums: implicitly, they challenge the relevance of the nation - specifically, of both the historical idea that initiated the invention of the public museum (cf. e.g. Bennett 1999) and the political fundament of European integration today. They provoke questions of settledness, citizenship, or contemporary globalisation phenomena that are equally implicitly put on display. The consequent effect is a blurring of the concept of the nation-state. Finally, migration as a museal topic conveys a view on how the institution of the 'museum' relates to such a fuzzy thing as mobility, thus provoking questions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Modern & Contemporary France is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Within the last 2000 years the land demarcated by the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the Jordan Valley to the east has been one of the most disputed territories in history. World powers have redrawn its boundaries numerous times. Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 within British Mandate Palestine, Palestinians and Israelis have disagreed over the national identity of the land that they both inhabit. The struggles have extended from the battlefields to the classrooms. In the process, different national and ethnic groups have used various sciences, ranging from archeology to history and geography, to prove territorial claims based on their historical presence in the region. But how have various Israeli social and political groups used maps to solidify claims over the territory? In this paper we bring together science studies and critical cartography in order to investigate cartographic representations as socially embedded practices and address how visual rhetoric intersects with knowledge claims in cartography. Before the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the Israeli government and the Jewish National Fund produced maps of Israel that established a Hebrew topography of the land. After 1967, Israel’s expanded territorial control made the demarcation of its borders ever more controversial. Consequently, various Israeli interest groups and political parties increasingly used various cartographic techniques to forge territorial spaces, demarcate disputed boundaries, and inscribe particular national, political, and ethnic identities onto the land. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the history of the European map of the Carolines or Palau Islands by the Jesuit priest and cartographer Paul Klein in 1706. It describes the transfer of knowledge between colonists and European cartographers and priests, exploring European conceptions of space during colonial expansion into the New World. It then discusses European understandings of missions and eschatological views of European imperialist expansion, exploring how these conceptions related to map-making and the representation of the New World.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of state socialism in Eastern and Central Europe, cartographers were faced with choices on how the new post-Cold War political landscape would be mapped. One such group called the Pluto Project had been producing atlases since 1981 with a progressive point of view about the nature of state power in the Cold War. This essay examines two of the Pluto Project's atlases as they function to identify a radical cartographic style that animates the social control of space by subverting traditional cartographic forms and defying scientific expectations and standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on different forms of cartifacts or geographical artifactual visualization and memorabilia which include map-trousers, clothes-maps, and map sneakers. It states that the cartifacts can be encountered in day-to-day social commerce since they are painted or printed on any conceivable material. It mentions that cartifacts come in various shapes and sizes, and possess interesting value. Moreover, several web sites are given to offer information about cartifacts including http;//www.elisabethlecourt.com/html/recent.html and http://cartophilia.com/blog/images/mapsneaker.jpg.

This essay traces the early history of the genre of the empire map in China, examines twelfth-century steles and printed maps of the Chinese territories, and analyses contemporary viewings and readings of maps in this genre. It argues that such maps reached a much broader readership of literate elites over the course of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and acquired new political significance as maps became powerful symbols in debates concerning the pros and cons of negotiated peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Essential to the fur trade and to colonial expansion into Canada, métissage considerably marked Canadian history by creating new cultural spaces – Métis geographies – between Aboriginal and European societies. My objective here is to investigate the role of colonial maps – from the French regime up to the late nineteenth century – in the mental representation of these specific Métis geographies and in the development and evolution of the idea of métissage . The idea of métissage reveals colonial ambivalence. The idea is, in fact, built upon the dialectic between recognition and denial, the latter mostly fed by discourses of anti-métissage . Although colonial officials were often forced to acknowledge Euro-Indian métissage at colonial margins, they never completely accepted the idea that “primitive” and European cultures could be mixed. Métissage was acceptable insofar as it was marginal (socially and spatially speaking) and did not endanger the spread of “civilization.” Maps represent colonial ambiguity toward métissage . On the one hand, given their intent to be objective accounts of geographic reality and their dependence on the geographic information provided by Aboriginal peoples, maps record, at the margins of colonial reach, the nascent manifestation of Métis geographies. On the other hand, because they are sociocultural constructions, maps are components of the discourse of anti-métissage; while Métis geographies were sometimes visually silenced, at other times they were cartographically erased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A values mapping process has been used with considerable success in managing land use conflict in the far northwest of Tasmania in Australia. The process involves an extensive recruitment process, facilitated single-stakeholder and multi-stakeholder group work, and the use of topographical maps as a focus for the discussion of conflict issues and stakeholder values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Two developments in cartography mark an epistemic break with the assumption that maps are unproblematic communication devices. These are 1) investigations of maps as practices of power-knowledge; and 2) ‘geographic visualization’ (GVis) which uses the map’s power to explore, analyze and visualize spatial datasets to understand patterns better. These developments are key components of a ‘maps as social constructions’ approach, emphasizing the genealogy of power in mapping practices, and enabling multiple, contingent and exploratory perspectives of data. Furthermore, this approach is an opportunity for cartography to renew its relationship with a critical human geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the mid-thirteenth century, Matthew Paris produced visual itineraries depicting the route from London to the Holy Land. These maps belong to an exegetical cartographic-mode also found in other medieval maps, such as mappae-mundi. Rather than serving as practical tools for directing pilgrims to the Holy Land, Matthew's itineraries served as occasions for spiritual pilgrimages carried out within the confines of St. Albans monastery. In contrast to the cartography that emerged during the early modern period, in which nature is conceived as positive and spatially continuous, these exegetical maps treat nature negatively as a space of discontinuity between sites of civilization. Through various cartographic strategies, nature is invoked only to be confined to the margins of medieval pilgrimage. Emptied of meaning, the natural world thus becomes a non-space that allows human interpretation to enter into the cartographic text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community mapping helps residents define their worries and realize their dreams WHEN WE ARE LOST, a map helps us find our way. It helps us locate where we are and […]

Two quite different concepts of space are important in geography and environmental psychology. One is the concept of macro-environment, of space as geographical scale. The other is the concept of form-at-a-timeless-instant: of naive geometry. Confusing these two concepts leads to serious errors. This paper examines some methodological and philosophical sources of this confusion, and points to a number of research problems in geography and psychology that can benefit from an untangling of the two concepts of space. One such problem is the need to understand the development of mapping abilities in very young children. Another is the larger question of building a body of theory to explain the development of macro-environmental cognition and behavior. Key Words: macro-environment, spatial form, scale, children's mapping.