Núria FONT-CASASECA, Departament de Geografia. Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
Núria BENACH, Departament de Geografia. Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
There has been a historical mistrust between radical/critical geography and cartography that started in the 70s and increased in the 90s with explicit attacks to GIS, even though all along time there have been multiple examples of how maps have positively contributed to the construction of a critical geography. On the other hand, a critical understanding of social and spatial inequalities gets much stronger by incorporating a relational geography perspective, this is, that injustice not just happens on space but because of space. Thus, adopting a spatial justice perspective allows to go beyond stating the existence of social inequalities and facilitates a repolitized spatial understanding of them.
Joining both concerns, our objective is to demonstrate that the creation of other kind of maps beyond the hegemonic cartographic tradition can reinforce our critical positions and more specifically, can be an invaluable tool to expand the political potential of the spatial justice perspective. However, given the overwhelming power of hegemonic cartographic views, this may not be an easy task. This presentation deals with these difficulties by questioning “all-purpose social inequality maps” that stigmatize places and by defending the use of maps to produce new ways of thinking about space.
It develops three main ideas. 1) the apparent objectivity of maps is an illusion that has real effects on how we understand and try to address spatial inequalities, 2) incorporating lived dimensions such as emotions can crucially enhance the significance of injustice, 3) the power of maps can be used to denounce the causes of spatial injustice by creating bold statements that can be easily understood (i.e. protest maps), by changing the ways we conventionally think about space (i.e. representing relational geographies showing those responsible for producing those inequalities) or by generating first-hand emancipatory knowledge (i.e. maps produced by those oppressed or left behind).
Mots clés : spatial justice|relational geographies|mapping|emancipatory knowledge
A103179NF