geog 381: territory and mapping

TERRITORY & MAPPINGTechnologies of claiming space

Wednesday, 30 January, 13

Terra means land, earth, nourishment, sustenance; it conveys the sense of a sustaining medium, solid, fading of into indefiniteness. But the form of the word [Oxford English Dictionary] says, suggests that it derives from

terrere, meaning to frighten, to terrorize. And Territorium is a “place from which people are warned”. Perhaps these two contending derivations continue to occupy territory today. To occupy a territory is to receive sustenance and

to exercise violence. Territory is land occupied by violence.

-William Connolly (1996, 144)


THE TERRITORY OF TERRITORY

Territory as a ‘noun’ (a thing, a place)

Territory at a range of scales (the nation-state, the home, the office, Harbour Centre, Vancouver General Hospital, the Archdiocese of Toronto

Signalled by meaningful boundaries (fences, checkpoints, ‘Bienvenue a Québec’, ‘Keep Out’)


TERRITORY AS A THING

Political space

“Bounded social spaces that inscribes a certain sort of meaning onto defined segments of the material world” (Delaney 2005)


TERRITORIES AT DIFFERENT SCALES


MARKING TERRITORY


TERRITORIALITY

Text

Refers more to the relationship

between territories and

some other social phenomena

(racism, power, labour)

Kowloon Walled City (China): The once most densely populated place in the world


TERRITORIALITYTreats territory less as an inert ‘thing’ and more as an aspect of various dimensions of social life.

Sidewalk utility markings designate space and produce a particular, specialized, technical

meaning. (More on this later).


TERRITORY AS A VERB

Geographers talk of ‘deterritorializing’ and ‘reterritorializing’ (linking territory/territoriality to globalization)

Verbs need subjects: who territorializes?

What are the means by which we territorialize, what are territorializing practices?


99% INVISIBLEA podcast about design--with

a focus on the little details 99% of us miss: the colour of

money, old fashioned systems of trash removal, logo design

and more.

Above: Philadelphia’s LOVE Park and, Right: Techniques

of Territoriality, or Anti-Skater ‘Bumpers’


CLAIMING SPACEWhat approaches do we see utilized to claim space?

Are some spaces claimed by more than

one party? How do we legislate

seemingly competing claims to space?


MAPPING TERRITORYOne way we make space is

by representing space, a kind of representational power embedded in the

technologies of GIS, mapping, and place-naming

as techniques of spatial knowledge production.


CALCULATION AND CONTROL

Are maps predictive? Do they represent or do they perform a kind of reality

about the relationship between people and space?

How do maps produce legibility and visibility?

Why is seeing important?


PROJECTS OF VISIBILITY & LEGIBILITY

The wide-open spaces of Brasilia are centred on projects of ‘state power’, property maps, house

numbering


ALTERNATIVE MAPSCHALLENGE THE REPRESENTATIONAL

POWER OF MAPS

Map comparing the relative size of Europe/North Africa to North

America.

Housing foreclosures in New Haven, Connecticut (home of

Yale University)


ALTERNATIVE MAPSCHALLENGE THE REPRESENTATIONAL

POWER OF MAPS

Participatory renaming of streets in Cambridge, Massachusetts (home of Harvard University)

The lines of the London Underground as stitched on rice

paper


POP VS. SODA


RENDITION FLIGHTS

Geographer and artist Trevor Paglen maps secret CIA rendition flights, the process by which detainees in the GWOT were shuffled to locales that legalize torture for interrogation. This map was published and made into a billboard.


geog 381: territory and mapping

Documents

territorialitytreats

territory mappingtechnologies

kind of representational

projects of state power

property maps

populated place

technical meaning

social phenomena racism