Such a conceptual expansion allows us to fully grasp the challenges of the digital and online turning point of mapping, in particular, the non-representational dimensions of digital geographic information, as well as its circulation and dissemination. “In fact, maps are no longer maps,” says an article in the French newspaper Le Monde. “They are databases, i.e. sets of points, objects, names… which, on demand, are transformed into a particular map, with a different appearance according to needs” (Larousserie 2013, author’s translation). Yet, while this type of data is multiplying (big geodata), becoming ubiquitous in people’s daily lives (Global Positioning System (GPS) in cars, geolocation applications on phones, consultation of websites, etc.), it is becoming increasingly difficult to analyze the power relations that structure these new phenomena and their social and political implications. This is why, according to Pierre Gautreau and Mathieu Noucher (Chapter 3), understanding these “shifting” objects implies reinventing the concepts and methods of critical cartography. The question of intentionality becomes particularly complex to decipher since the distinction between amateur and expert, or between producer and user of a map (or of geographic information) often proves to be blurred (we then talk about “produsers”) (Noucher 2017; Gautreau and Noucher in this book). Finally, the contributions of pragmatics and semiology, attached to the detailed observation of the signs and micro-actions involved in cartographic production, have also consolidated the empirical validation of the critique, which has been said to be lacking in many previous works (Palsky 2003)6.
Finally, the range of theories and concepts that have been mobilized to think about and operationalize a critical cartography of state and colonial production has expanded considerably over time. The Marxist critique of the 1970s, which was in some ways the inaugural one, gave way to more detailed analyses of the relationships of power and domination as expressed in cartographic production, while also turning to questions of identity and culture (identity politics), under the influence of cultural studies and post-colonial and decolonial criticism. The problem of gender, on the other hand, has long constituted a silence in the approaches that are part of the “Harleyian tradition”. Indeed, while Harley was particularly sensitive to the intentional and unintentional silences of maps (Harley 1988b), he himself remained silent on the role of women in cartographic production and on one of the most structuring categories of social relations: gender. According to Nikolas Huffman, this blind spot is due to conceptions of society and space that have long since naturalized the masculinist episteme of science, and thus also of mapping (Huffman 1995, pp. 1622–1630).
This book, through its above-mentioned chapters, aims to give an account of the variety of political analyses of mapping (and geographic information) and their theoretical or methodological references. It goes beyond the perimeter of critical cartography by not limiting its scope to relationships of power and domination. While it takes into account the latter (politics), it does not ignore the institutional issues (polity) that effect the production of maps, nor the public policies that give rise to many maps, certainly in order to justify and design them, but also to distribute them (see Chapter 9)7.
I.2. Political practices and uses of maps
The second objective of this collective work is to point out a series of social and technical transformations that force us to move away from the implicit equivalence between mapping, power and the state. In addition to the fact that the political analysis of societies has, on the whole, become detached from a vision centered on the state, fundamental social transformations have taken place over the last few decades in the production and use of maps and geographical information.
I.2.1. New modalities, new actors: the questioning of cartographic state sovereignty
The second half of the 20th century saw a major change in this field: the diversification of actors gaining access to the production of maps, which had, since at least the 19th century, been monopolized by state and military institutions. The launch of the first satellites (see Sputnik 1, sent into space by the Soviets in 1957) marked the first challenge to the cartographic sovereignty of states: indeed, outer space is marked by a legal vacuum (it refers to space beyond airspace, the latter being included in the sovereignty of states). Although the producers of satellite images were initially guided by military uses, from the 1970s onwards, remote sensing expanded its civil uses (Landsat, Spot images, etc.). However, data production has remained permanently dominated by the United States and a few other hegemonic actors (Desbois 2015). Hy Dao (see Chapter 7) shows that international governance arising after the Second World War (United Nations (UN) agencies in particular) has also adopted the production of a certain type of data, supposedly to help solve major global issues, including environmental problems.
The second challenge to the state’s quasi-monopoly in cartographic and geographic information production occurred at the turn of the 21st century, with the digital revolution and the widespread use of the Internet and geospatial technologies. Global players such as Google benefited from the transfer of digital geographic information technologies from the military to the civilian domain (Cloud 2002; Desbois 2015). Not only have they challenged the monopoly of states in the production and dissemination of geographic information, especially on the Internet, but they have also entered the daily lives of individuals. These private companies now possess significant means of cartographic production – or, more generally, of georeferenced information – and contribute massively to the “deluge” of data and images (the famous big data).
The third crack in the edifice of state cartographic sovereignty has come “from below”. As Jeremy Crampton and John Krygier point out: “In the last few years cartography has been slipping from the control of the powerful elites that have exercised dominance over it for several hundred years” (Crampton and Krygier 2006, p. 12). Grassroots social movements or civil society actors with “local” anchors (“inhabitants”, “citizens”, members of cultural “minorities” or “Indigenous peoples”, etc.) have been increasingly producing their own maps (Debarbieux and Lardon 2003). The local framing of their actions has not prevented them from defending causes that are sometimes transnational or even global (as in the case of the fight against climate change). This shift may have taken place both because of easier and cheaper access to certain mapping or geospatial techniques and because of their growing involvement in development or territorial planning projects. These actors have seen cartographic language as a means of defending the quality of their space and living environment, of claiming rights, of promoting political causes or seeking sociospatial justice; or, in a less radical spirit, as a means of dialogue with the authorities in order to make their visions and perceptions of space known. These processes are part of both resistance and openness attitudes, as Greg Brown and Hunter Glanz show when describing participatory GIS practices in the context of territorial planning projects in the state of California: the mapping of their spatial preferences by inhabitants highlights both negative attitudes of rejection (nimby or Not-In-My-Back-Yard) and positive attitudes of support for these projects (yimby or Yes-In-My-Back-Yard), depending on the distance between their home and the project (Brown and Glanz 2018). Another characteristic of these actors “from below” is that they have massively