The Practices of Mapping

For the past three decades Denis Wood has explored the and power of maps; how maps are designed, used, understood, the role of maps in society; and theory more broadly. His collaboration John Fels, The Natures of Maps, furthers this project seeks to detail both the nature of maps and the nature maps. For Wood and Fels, ontological thinking cartography has been fixated on the nature of . They illustrate this argument with reference to Robinson and J.B. Harley, two cartographic with very different ideas about the ontology of – maps as objective truths and maps as social . Wood and Fels argue that, despite their , Robinson and Harley both conceive of a map having an inherent truth (they note that for Harley the itself remains ideologically neutral, with ideology to the subject of the map and not the map itself). and Fels reject this position to argue that the itself, its very make-up and construction – its selfpresentation design, its symbol set and categorization, attendant text and supporting discourse – is ideologically to convey a particular message. In so doing, a does not simply represent the world, it produces the . To illustrate their argument, they use the example the nature of a map – how the supposedly neutral, natural world is produced by maps – demonstrate how maps produce nature rather than it.