3.0

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This course examines mapping through an ethnographic lens. We will both study the design of maps as a key technology to survey territories and populations, as well as forms of countermapping: practices that turn this top-down, governmental tool on its head and facilitate a ground-up, collaborative process of representing space. We will survey various forms of data visualization, oral history and narrative cartography, as methods for the generation of local knowledge. Cases include indigenous counter-mapping of communal land, collective cartography in Latin America, anti-eviction mapping projects in American cities, and others. The course involves critical discussions of theoretical and ethnographic texts, as well as the practical exploration of different mapmaking techniques (ArcGIS, hands-on activities on campus and its surroundings), and their importance as possible contributions to anthropological analysis and community engagement.