| Kommentar |
This block seminar introduces students to critical cartographies and counter-mapping methods in human geography and urban studies. Mapping as an explorative analytical tool has been used as a method to understand the visible and invisible spatial, temporal, social, and material aspects of the urban landscape, including techniques such as sketching mental maps or collaging, or collective and bottom-up approaches like participatory or cognitive mapping processes. The seminar offers an entry point to and discussion of these methods, in addition to practical exercises in mapping methods which we will carry out in collaboration with Berlin-based and international mapping collectives. In (urban) spatial research methodology, mapping is applied as a tool to capture the entanglements of human and non-human actors, materialities, and cultural meanings in the contemporary city. The focus of this seminar is on interactive web maps and story maps that deal with meanings of and socio-material conflicts about land, terrain, soils, and pavements in the city.
Possible collaborations include the Brazilian Project ‘Ground Atlas’ (https://www.atlasdochao.org/sobre/), the Open Soil Atlas Berlin (https://www.feldfoodforest.org/copia-di-open-soil-atlas-coming-soo?lang=de) and the Multispecies Resistance collective Berlin (https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/46d781eb9f3743c49b0f6490100074f7).
The goal of this course is that each student will map a particular ‘point’ in Berlin (a piece of land, from Baumscheibe/street corner to public park or Brache/wasteland) that tells a story of a conflict about soil or land, or that reveals a particular (historical) meaning of the urban grounds. Between sessions (July 15-21), students will collect data in the form of participant observation, interviews, archival work, photography or video/audio recordings. This data will then be selected and interpreted together in-class. The final assignment is the preparation (and possibly: upload/online publication) of an essay and selected audiovisual material about the ‘points’ selected by each student. |
| Literatur |
Arènes A, Latour B & Gaillardet J (2018) Giving Depth to the Surface: An Exercise in the Gaia-Graphy of Critical Zones. Anthropocene Review 5(2): 120–35.
King JKK, Granjou C, Salazar JF, Kearnes M, Krzywoszynska A & Tironi M (2020) Mapping Soil, Losing Ground? Politics of Soil Mapping. Thinking with Soils: Material Politics and Social Theory, 39.
Kollektiv Orangotango (n.d.) Handbuch Kollektives Kritisches Kartieren. at: https://bit.ly/30LoEOh.
Kurgan L (2013) Close up at a Distance. Mapping, Technology, and Politics. New York: Zone books.
Peluso NL (1995) Whose Woods Are These? Counter‐mapping Forest Territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Antipode 27(4): 383–406.
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