Interpreting the drawn line

Keywords: map, GIS, mapmaking, interpretation
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

What is possible in the reading of a drawn line? The decline of university offerings in map interpretation can be placed alongside the growth of coursework and degree programs in computer-aided cartography and GIS. Techniques in digital mapping are thought to supersede skillsets in non-digital map reading and map drawing. Fast, accurate, and interoperable, the new approach to mapping would generate the need for an entirely different series of coursework as well as differently trained faculty. At the heart of this transition, I suggest, is also a significant change in materials. Drafting tools and drawing mediums assemble different forces, memories, and capacities. In this study of courses in map reading and writing after World War II, I document these shifts and consider what might have been lost. I argue that a key aspect of geographic learning has been surrendered to technological relations. Thought as a toxicity, the symbolic work of the map has become opaque to the general user and consumer of the map. The musculature of map interpretation persists untrained. The implications multiply, whether in understanding the precarities of climate change or the spatialities of social inequalities or in intervening with the drawn line.