Critical Cartography and Cultural Mapping

Critical cartography emerged as a challenge to conventional mapping practices by examining how maps reflect and reinforce power structures, ideological biases and social inequalities. It foregrounds the map as a constructed and contested artefact shaped by political economy, epistemic frameworks and technological infrastructures. Cultural mapping, a parallel strand, emphasises the role of communities and creative practitioners in documenting tangible and intangible heritage, social relations and place-making processes. By integrating participatory methods, artistic interventions and storytelling, cultural mapping seeks to represent multiple perspectives on space and place, often highlighting marginalised voices and histories. Together, these approaches have advanced a more reflexive cartography that interrogates the production, circulation and reception of maps; supports decolonial and feminist agendas; and enables new forms of governance, activism and community empowerment across diverse contexts.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Critical Cartography and Cultural Mapping publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in critical cartography and cultural mapping across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Critical cartography: An approach that interrogates the social, political and ideological underpinnings of map production and use.

Cultural mapping: A participatory method that documents and visualises cultural assets, heritage and community knowledge in spatial form.

Counter-mapping: The practice of producing maps that challenge official or hegemonic spatial representations and assert alternative narratives.

Processual cartography: A theoretical perspective focusing on maps as dynamic processes and assemblages rather than fixed representations.

Decolonial cartography: A mapping practice that seeks to disrupt colonial power relations by foregrounding indigenous, subaltern and local epistemologies.

References

1. Cultural Mapping Tools and Co-Design Process: A Content Analysis to Layering Perspectives on the Creative Production of Space. Sustainability (2023).
2. The C-word: how critical cartography, critical GIS and critical data studies can repoliticise disaster-related maps. Disaster Prevention and Management An International Journal (2023).
3. Counter‐Mapping, Counter‐Histories, and Insurgencies of Subjugated Knowledges in the Fisher Struggle for Ennore Creek. Antipode (2024).