Course detail

Politics of Mapping

FA-POM-ZEAcad. year: 2025/2026

The course introduces students to ideas of critical cartography as a central axis to the challenges of integrative urbanism, by addressing the political stakes of mapping. Since the 1980s a growing body of theoretical literature and activist and art experiments have critiqued maps as being not just representations of space, but also expressions of power. This challenge to the status of maps has been intensified by the ways in which digital mapping technologies have opened up questions of what is the appropriate scale for mapping, of who maps and on the basis of what data, even to the extent of blurring the boundaries between mapper and mapped. In this context, one could argue that the challenge of researching the contemporary city is that of working out appropriate practices, tools and concepts of mapping, and of representing and diffusing the results thus achieved. The course builds on the work done by the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism documented in the publications: Siarhei Liubimau and Benjamin Cope (eds) Retooling Knowledge Infrastructures in a Nucelar Town ((Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, forthcoming), Felix Ackermann, Benjamin Cope and Miodrag Kuc (eds) Mapping Vilnius: Transformations in Post-Socialist Spaces (Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, 2016) and Felix Ackermann, Benjamin Cope and Siarhei Liubimau (eds) Mapping Visaginas: Sources of Urbanity in a Former Mono-Functional Town (Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla).

Language of instruction

English

Number of ECTS credits

3

Mode of study

Not applicable.

Department

European Humanities University ()

Aims

  • Students gain knowledge in theoretical writing on critical mapping, and of debates on how changing practices, technologies and understandings of mapping are impacting on cities.
  • The aim of the readings, discussions and experiments in critical mapping is to provide students with the tools to develop mapping methodologies as part of the techniques for organising information and as part of wider sociological and theoretical arguments in their own research.
  • Critical mapping sensitizes students to the ethical and practical dimensions of mapping in the diverse and unpredictable contexts of contemporary cities. On the basis of lectures and seminars, students learn to autonomously develop their own mapping projects. They also review the impact of the work they develop and contribute to the evaluation of their colleagues’ projects.

Rules for evaluation and completion of the course

  • semester paper (40%, at the end of the course)
  • oral presentation of map analysis  (40%, cumulative through the course, topics 2-7)
  • contribution to class discussion (20%, throughout the course)

Study aids

Not applicable.

Prerequisites and corequisites

Not applicable.

Basic literature

Crampton, Jeremy W. and John Krygier. 2006. “An Introduction to Critical Cartography,” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 4(1), 11-33. (EN)
Crampton, Jeremy. 2009. “Cartography: Maps 2.0” Progress in Human Geography. 33/1: 91–100. (EN)
D’Ignazio, Catharine, Don Blair, and Jeffrey Warren. 2015. “Less is More: The Role of Small Data for Governance in the 21st Century” in Texeira, Alex Niche, ed. Governança Digital. Centro de Estudos Internacionais sobre Governo (CEGOV), 2015. (EN)
Dorrian, Mark. 2015. “Adventures on the Vertical: From the New Vision to Powers of Ten” Writing on the Image: Architecture, The City and the Politics of Representation. London and New York: Tauris, pp. 61-78. (EN)
Felix Ackermann, Benjamin Cope and Miodrag Kuc (eds) Mapping Vilnius: Transformations in Post-Socialist Spaces (Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, 2016) (EN)
Felix Ackermann, Benjamin Cope and Siarhei Liubimau (eds) Mapping Visaginas: Sources of Urbanity in a Former Mono-Functional Town (Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla). (EN)
Harris, Leila and Helen Hazen. 2009. “Rethinking Maps from a More-than-human Perspective: Nature-society, Mapping and Conservation Territories.” In Dodge, Martin; Kitchin, Rob; Perkins, Chris (ed.) Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory. London: Routledge, 50-68. (EN)
Krygier, John and Denis Wood. 2011. Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS (The Guilford Press: New York). (EN)
Latour, Bruno and Emilie Hermant. 1998. Paris: ville invisible. Paris: La Découverte. Available in English at: www.bruno-latour.fr/virtual/EN/index.html (EN)
Latour, Bruno. 1986. “Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together.” In Kuklick H. (ed.) Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present (London: Jai Press) 6: 1-40. (EN)
Scott, James. 1998. “The High Modernist City: an Experiment and a Critique” in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), pp. 103-147. (EN)
Siarhei Liubimau and Benjamin Cope (eds) Retooling Knowledge Infrastructures in a Nucelar Town ((Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, forthcoming) (EN)
Special issue “A Critical Theory of the ‘Public’ for Digitally Mediated Urbanization”, ed. Siarhei Liubimau, Perekrestki No 1 (2019). (EN)

Recommended reading

Baldwin, Davarian. 2017. “Chicago’s ‘Concentric Zones’: Thinking Through the Material History of an Iconic Map,” in Margaret Salazar-Porzio and Joan Fragaszy Troyano (eds). Many Voices, One Nation: Material Culture Reflections on Race and Migration in the United States America. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press (EN)
Dalton, C. & Mason-Deese, L. 2012. “Counter (Mapping) Actions: Mapping as Militant Research,” ACME. 11/3: 439-466. (EN)
Dodge, Martin, Kitchin Rob and Zook Mathew, 2009, "How does software make space? Exploring some geographical dimensions of pervasive computing and software studies" Environment and Planning A 41/6: 1283 – 1293. (EN)
Pavlovskaya, Marina. 2018. “Critical GIS as a Tool for Social Transformation,” The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien, 62(1): 40–54. (EN)

Classification of course in study plans

  • Programme NE_INUS Master's 1 year of study, summer semester, compulsory-optional

Type of course unit

 

Seminar

12 hod., compulsory

Teacher / Lecturer

Syllabus

3. Maps and Modernist Urban Forms [2 hours]
4. Maps and Scale [2 hours]
5. Digital Maps [2 hours]
6. How to Map Otherwise 1: Inclusion and Exclusion [2 hours]
7. How to Map Otherwise 2: the Process of Mapping [2 hours]
8. Presentation and Discussion of Final Projects and Review of the Impacts of Mapping [2 hours]

Lecture

4 hod., optionally

Teacher / Lecturer

Syllabus

1. Introduction – Critique of the Power of Maps [2 hours]
2. Map Design and the Representation of Diversity [2 hours]