PLEASE NOTE: This is currently being re-formatted
The Spatial Turn in Anthropology · Spatial Humanities
“discern a culture’s metaphysics from its material culture”
Wondering - Like a reverse engineering of world-views through a deconstruction of the tools (language, symbols, artefacts, etc.) that were left behind. Not unlike what one could do by looking at a website from 1994 vs. a website from 2004, and one from 2017.
“Their language had “innumerable terms for islands,” including “island at the foot of a mountain,” and “island in the neck of a river.” Locations could be described in terms of their vista: a “place of looking all around” as opposed to a “place of looking inside.””
Wonderful - this type of language for the understanding of space and one’s relation to it, really speaks to a language of “having been there”. This kind of language evokes a true spirit of discovery.
Mapping | Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities | MLA CommonsMapping | Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities
“Though the list is not specific only for mapping & GIS related activities, examples and elements of mapping, GIS, 3D modeling, and spatial visualization are included in almost of the categories.”
Wondering - would mapping of ideas over time, or the evolution of culture over time not be equally of interest to the humanities? I wonder if, not unlike a pivot table in excel, we couldn’t look at maps as different data points being compared against other different data points, in a way that would allow for an almost endless set of permutations of understanding of the world. This makes me also think of Big Data, and whether using different algorithms can help us come up with different ways of mapping and understanding the world around us, perhaps at a pace that is commensurate with the rate at which it is changing.
“Whether the project falls on the grand or simple end of the spectrum, maps and mapping are both avenues for learning in the humanities.”
Wonderful - I like this because it shows that maps as an artefact can show us how the world was perceived, as well as how it was experienced. In a more modern sense, how we map and architect content is also telling of how the world was perceived as well as our understanding of it. If we compare a website from 1994 and one from 2014, we see drastic differences in the mapping information at a site level, as well as at a page level, as our understanding of the medium is enriched through experiencing it.
“The map becomes an organizational template, as well as an approach for search and discovery within what could otherwise be an uninteresting database of information.”
Wondering - The map becomes like a latticework upon which the vines of human imagination can grow, supported by a structured idea of what the known boundaries of the possible are, thus allowing us to launch from there into parts unknown, into places where “there be dragons”.
“Students and instructors alike are largely ill-prepared to read and interpret maps with confidence or competence (Lloyd and Bunch 2010), especially when one goes beyond a conventional map as normative, scientific product and considers them as a social construct or proposition (Kitchin, Perkins and Dodge 20XX)”
Wondering - While I understand this from a perspective of being in a transitional stage between one technology being ubiquitous and another being a fail-safe, I do wonder how much longer this argument will hold? As digital technology becomes more and more embedded, and underlying infrastructures lessen the need for unpacking maps, I think that at some point this argument may become anachronistic.
“why and how can be intuited automatically by a viewer.”
Wondering - are why and how always necessary though? In the sense of a GPS mapping app like WAZE for example, I just follow the directions without having to worry about the why and how of where it tells me to go.
“Maps have played an understated but central and contentious role in the real-time activities of explorations, conquests, and migrations, and thus are equally helpful in studying these events later.”
Wondering - I also see them as a way of making connections between things in a way that reduces anxiety about what is in the mind, in the world, or both.