Mapping the Unmappable?

Cartographic Explorations with Indigenous Peoples in Africa

Ute Dieckmann

• Publisher: transcript Verlag
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9783837652413
• eBook ISBN: 9783839452417
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: Social Sciences

How can we map differing perceptions of the living environment? Mapping the Unmappable? explores the potential of cartography to communicate the relations of Africa's indigenous peoples with other human and non-human actors within their environments. These relations transcend Western dichotomies such as culture-nature, human-animal, natural-supernatural. The volume brings two strands of research – cartography and »relational« anthropology – into a closer dialogue. It provides case studies in Africa as well as lessons to be learned from other continents (e.g. North America, Asia and Australia). The contributors create a deepened understanding of indigenous ontologies for a further decolonization of maps, and thus advance current debates in the social sciences.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Cartographic explorations with indigenous peoples in Africa
• Where is the map?
• What were we mapping? From the Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project to the Southern Kalahari
• Hai||om in Etosha: Cultural maps and being‐in-relations
• Densities of meaning in west Namibian landscapes: genealogies, ancestral agencies, and healing
• Mapping multiple in Maasailand: Ontological openings for knowing and managing nature otherwise
• Mapping materiality – social relations with objects and landscapes
• Canvases as legal maps in native title claims
• Mapping meaning with comics – Enhancing Maps with visual art and narrative
• What shall we map next? Expressing Indigenous geographies with cartographic language
• About the authors