Maps: Finding our place in the world

Jim Akerman and Bob Karrow’s new book is called Maps: Finding our Place in the world and has been released by good old U Chicago Press as part of the Festival of Maps going on there. Nice title! But then I would think so wouldn’t I since I used the same metaphor in my own […]

Politics of maps

I’m thinking of some sessions for next year’s AAG conference in Boston, perhaps on the politics of maps. There are so may ways to go on this topic however: historical, regional or some kind of cross-cutting theme. A review in the New Yorker highlights this issue. Sixty years ago, India was partitioned: Cyril Radcliffe, a […]

“So Yahoo hired a professional ontologist…”

This article by Clay Shirky is a good encapsulation of the computer/GIScientist understanding of ontology that is rapidly entering geography and especially mapping and GIS: It is a rich irony that the word “ontology”, which has to do with making clear and explicit statements about entities in a particular domain, has so many conflicting definitions. […]

New book: Stuart Elden Terror and Territory

Stuart has a new book out: Terror and Territory, The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty. From the publisher: A timely analysis of the contemporary state of territory Today’s global politics demands a new look at the concept of territory. From so-called deterritorialized terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda to U.S.-led overthrows of existing regimes in the Middle […]

Mayhew on historical geography

Just catching up with one of my favorite journals, Progress in Human Geography. Robert Mayhew, a geographer at Bristol, has a progress report on historical geography in the June issue. He  claims that historical geography today is suffused with Foucault’s influence. I want to divide recent work in historical geography into three sets of interrelated […]

My new book

Readers of this blog may be interested in my new book, which I am very pleased to say has just been listed on Amazon. It is called simply Mapping, and is part of the Wiley-Blackwell series on Critical Geographies. This series is aimed at senior undergraduate and graduate (or post-graduate) students, and provides book-length discussions […]

New Google Earth controversy in Japan similar to Bowman Expeditions controversy

In this computer screen image taken from the Google Earth software, a feudal map of a village in central Japan from hundreds of years ago, superimposed on a modern street map, is shown. The village is clearly labeled “eta,” an old word for Japan’s outclass of untouchables known as “burakumin.” The word literally means “filthy […]

New Google streetview for Philadelphia. Here’s the Eastern State Penitentiary

Google released Streetview for 6 new cities a few days ago including Philadelphia. I’ve navigated to the Eastern State Penitentiary and you can see it in this link. Incredibly the one street they didn’t drive is right in front of the penitentiary so you have to see it from the corner! So no front-on shots […]

An atlas of radical cartography

An atlas of radical cartography opens today in LA. One exhibitor is Trevor Paglen, at Berkeley who has worked on the CIA extraordinary rendition. In an interview Paglen observes: Trevor: I’ve actually tried to stay away from cartography and “mapping” as much as possible in my work. The “God’s eye” view implicit in much cartography […]

Siegen, D

So, obviously not so much with the liveblogging. But hey, there’s no wifi at the conference nor the hotel. They have posted a nice Google MyMaps though, which unfortunately this blog is too small to contain.