Mapping the Urban Grounds. Excercises in critical cartographies - Detailseite

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, 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.

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.

Benöhr J, Donihue R, Farò D, Lara A, Virik KL, Toro C, Ponce de León A, Gygli B, Romo D & Walther FE (2022) Ecopolitical Mapping: A Multispecies Research Methodology for Environmental Communication. Revista CS 36: 317–43.

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.

Lachmund J (2022) Stewardship Practice and the Performance of Citizenship: Greening Tree-Pits in the Streets of Berlin. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 0(0): 1–17.

Lowenhaupt Tsing, A. (2021). Towards a Theory of Non-Scalability. Multitudes, 82, 65-71. 

Meulemans G (2020) Urban Pedogeneses. Environmental Humanities 12(1): 250–66.

Peluso NL (1995) Whose Woods Are These? Counter‐mapping Forest Territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Antipode27(4): 383–406.

Die Sitzungen am 21.10. und 25.11.2022 finden online statt (zoom).

Die Blocktermine am 13. und 14. Januar sowie 27. und 28.01 finden in Präsenz statt.

Oral Exam (20min) about the student's mapping.

During the semester (in-between sessions), the students will carry out independent research in Berlin, including the collection of audiovisual and/or (qualitative) Interviewmaterial and/or Fieldnotes, which will be combined into a (counter-)mapping.