Participatory/Feminist Cartography/Representation, AAG 2020

Below are all the session that jumped out during my initial scan through the 2020 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (April 6-10  in Denver) preliminary program as sessions relating to participatory, feminist, community, activist considerations to mapping and representation. 

Schedules and rooms are subject to change, so check in with the official website for the most up-to-date versioning. 

Monday, April 6th

 8:00 AM / 9:15 AM

Modes of study and world-making in geography: Convening a community of practice within and beyond education  Director's Row I, Sheraton, Plaza Building, Lobby Level

Future Space, Imagined Space, and Imaginaries Part 1 Denver, Sheraton, IM Pei Tower, Majestic Level

11:10 AM / 12:25 PM

Creative, critical, digital? Doing Digital GeoHumanities Director's Row I, Sheraton, Plaza Building, Lobby Level

1:30 PM / 2:45 PM

(Re)(Dis)Locating Black Geographies: Grappling with Present-Futures Space, Knowledge, and Practice of the Black Geographic Mineral Hall D, Hyatt Regency, Third Floor

4:40 PM / 5:55 PM

Revisiting explanation in Geography  Governors Square 11, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Tuesday, April 7th

8:40 AM / 9:55 AM

Critical Geographies of Mobility Using Digital Data I Governors Square 10, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Looking at the City through Art 1 Century, Sheraton, IM Pei Tower, Majestic Level

10:15 AM / 11:30 AM

Indigenous Science, Indigenous Geographies Centennial Ballroom, Hyatt Regency, Third Floor

 Looking at the City through Art 2  Century, Sheraton, IM Pei Tower, Majestic Level

11:50 AM / 1:05 PM

Cognition and Visualization 2 Plaza Ballroom E, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Housing Justice in Unequal Cities (3): Technologies and Epistemologies Governors Square 14, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Looking at the City through Art 3  Century, Sheraton, IM Pei Tower, Majestic Level

2:25 PM / 3:40 PM

Looking at the City through Art 4 Century, Sheraton, IM Pei Tower, Majestic Level

4:00 PM / 5:15 PM

Journal of Latin American Geography (JLAG) Annual Lecture: GeoBrujas Grand Ballroom 1, Sheraton, IM Pei Tower, Second Floor Level

5:35 PM / 6:50 PM

Digital Geographies Keynote Panel  Grand Ballroom 2, Sheraton, IM Pei Tower, Second Floor Level

Indigenous Territoriality and Colonial Cartographic Violence Director's Row I, Sheraton, Plaza Building, Lobby Level

Wednesday, April 8th

8:00 AM / 9:15 AM

Feminist Mapping 1: Data and Design Governors Square 14, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Community Geography 1: Community engagement and action Capitol Ballroom 1, Hyatt Regency, Fourth Floor

“Slow” Geographies and Ecological-Ethical Dilemmas of International Research Capitol Ballroom 3, Hyatt Regency, Fourth Floor

 9:35 AM / 10:50 AM

Feminist Mapping 2: Toolkits and Methods Governors Square 14, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Community Geography 2: Community Engagement and Action Capitol Ballroom 1, Hyatt Regency, Fourth Floor

11:10 AM / 12:25 PM

Feminist Mapping 3: Inclusivity and Impact  Governors Square 14, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Community Geography 3: Power and positionality in participatory research  Capitol Ballroom 1, Hyatt Regency, Fourth Floor

Indigenous Mapping Conversations with Kanaka Hawaiʻi Cartography Plaza Ballroom D, Sheraton, Concourse Level

1:45 PM / 3:00 PM

Feminist Mapping 4: Re-Visiting Feminist Geography and GIS (2002) Governors Square 14, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Engaging in Community-based Participatory Research with Visual Narratives Governors Square 12, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Public Engagement and Environmental Problems

3:20 PM / 4:35 PM

Community Geography 4: Creative poster session  Agate A/B, Hyatt Regency, Third Floor

Critical Feminist Methods: Investigating gendered bodies, spaces, and struggles Director's Row I, Sheraton, Plaza Building, Lobby Level

4:55 PM / 6:10 PM

Critical feminist research methods II: Investigating gendered bodies, spaces, and struggles  Director's Row I, Sheraton, Plaza Building, Lobby Level

Election Mapping Plaza Ballroom D, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Cities and the abject: materialities, beings, and spaces  Granite A, Hyatt Regency, Third Floor

Thursday, April 9th

 11:10 AM / 12:25 PM
Geography Education: Perspectives on Advancing K-12 Learning Gold, Sheraton, IM Pei Tower, Majestic Level

 1:45 PM / 3:00 PM

Critical Indigenous Environments: Water, Resources, Energy, and Decolonizing Nature Governors Square 9, Sheraton, Concourse Level

4:55 PM / 6:10 PM

Feminist visualization: emerging methodologies interrogating power and representation Plaza Court 3, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Author Meets Critics: Matthew Edney’s “Cartography – The Ideal and Its History” Plaza Court 7, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Friday, April 10th

8:00 AM / 9:15 AM

Indigenous Geographies Tower Court C, Sheraton, IM Pei Tower, Second Floor Level

Geographies of Digital Power 1  Governors Square 10, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Mapping as Method, Plotting as Praxis: Slavery, the University, and the Undercommons  Mineral Hall D/E, Hyatt Regency, Third Floor

9:35 AM / 10:50 AM

Geographies of Digital Power 2 Governors Square 10, Sheraton, Concourse Level

Public Engagement and Environmental Problems  Tower Court B, Sheraton, IM Pei Tower, Second Floor Level

1:45 PM / 3:00 PM

A People’s Atlas of Detroit: Charting a Way Forward for Research and Organizing Director's Row E, Sheraton, Plaza Building, Lobby Level

Seeking Contributions: Public Archive of Participatory Produced Maps

I’m seeking contributions of map artifacts created as a part of participatory,collaborative, or community-driven projects. These artifacts will be used to establish a public archive.

Potential artifacts include finalized or draft versions of digital maps, pictures/scans of analog maps, pages of a document where maps have been published, or any other type of document that would allow one to clearly view the entirety of the map.

To ensure inclusion in the first public release of these artifacts, please submit contributions by February 2nd, 2018 via this link

If you have questions about the archive or experience difficulty accessing the links, please email me: amber.j.bosse@uky.edu.

[Notes]
1. As is suggested by this call, my method for archiving can be described as participatory. Participatory archives, as defined by Kate Theimer, are an, “organization, site or collection in which people other than the archives professionals contribute knowledge or resources resulting in increased understanding about archival materials, usually in an online environment” (2011). This project uses a fourth tier level of participation, where individuals actively contribute resources and knowledge rather than simply consume or engage materials contributed by others. While this mode of participation enacts particular types of exclusions, it also works to remedy the rigid, top down nature of traditional archives. Artifacts will be tagged and described by those with knowledge about the projects in which the maps are situated, allowing for the creation of a more robust, equitable public archive.

2. For my dissertation, I will use the artifact from the archive to explore the different rhetorical styles produced through participatory mapping. I will situate the results of quantitative and qualitative content analysis alongside supplementary interview which explore participatory mapping processes in depth. These results will  interrogate the boundaries/possibilities of “participation” in map making.

3. Recognizing that, for a number of reasons, a publicly available venue if not fitting for all maps-any maps you'd like be included in my analysis but excluded from the public archive, please email me directly: amber.j.bosse@uky.edu.

Button for the submission form not working? Here's the complete link:
https://www.formpl.us/form/5164790021357568

"These Maps Talk for Us:" Participatory Action Mapping as Civic Engagement Practice | My first publication ever!

I'm thrilled to announce that Katherine Hankins and I have a new publication (my first publication ever!) in a Focus Section of the Professional Geographer. This Focus Section (titled "Out in the World: Geography's Complex Relationship with Civic Engagement"), highlights  "key debates and challenges facing geographers who participate in community-engaged work, explorations of pedagogical and ethical practices, departmental and institutional challenges, and examples of thoughtful applications of geographic knowledge to community-based work" (Barcus and Trudeau 2017). Here, Katherine and I reflect on our collaboration with the Westside Atlanta Land Trust and name Participatory Action Mapping (PAM) as a method that allows communities/cartographers/geographers to create maps and mappings while simultaneously striving to critically consider the practices and traditions these processes of production evoke/challenge. Access the full article via this link (those without institutional access can get a free copy using this link or by contacting me). 

Boll-Bosse, Amber J., and Katherine B. Hankins. 2017. “‘These Maps Talk for Us:’ Participatory Action Mapping as Civic Engagement Practice.” The Professional Geographer, advanced online. doi:10.1080/00330124.2017.1366788.

Abstract: Geographers have long been associated with mapping and cartography, as the visual representation of space fits neatly into the wide-ranging discipline that engages both the physical and the social worlds. Mapmaking remained in the domain of experts for centuries until the advent of new mapping technologies, which have widened the possibilities for map-making from experts and non-experts alike. But simply widening participation in map-making does not necessarily democratize the knowledge-production process, as scholars have recently argued. What is required, we suggest, are critically-trained geographers who take seriously both the conventions of professional cartography and the power relations embedded in and reflected in the map-making process and in maps themselves. We name Participatory Action Mapping (PAM) as a methodology that seeks to be as effective in advancing the mapping needs of the public as it is critical in evaluating the processes through which maps are produced. PAM is a practice of civic engagement that borrows from community mapping, Public Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS), and that is deeply informed by Participatory Action Research (PAR). We highlight the contours of PAM through a case study of our work with the Westside Atlanta Land Trust in Atlanta, Georgia.  

Abstract: Key words: participatory mapping, PPGIS, community mapping, participatory action research, Atlanta

I also encourage you to check out the other articles in this Focus Section: 

Barcus, Holly R., and Dan Trudeau. 2017. “Introduction to Focus Section: Out in the World: Geography’s Complex Relationship with Civic Engagement.” 

Robinson, Jonnell A., and Timothy L. Hawthorne. 2017. “Making Space for Community-Engaged Scholarship in Geography.” 

Hawthorne, Timothy L., and Olga S. Jarrett. 2017. “Developing the Next Generation of Community-Based Scholars.” 

Glass, Michael. 2017. “Understanding the 24-Hour City: Engagement, Positionality, and the Coproduction of Knowledge.”

Block, Daniel R., Euan Hague, Winifred Curran, and Howard Rosing. 2017. “Measuring Community and University Impacts of Critical Civic Geography: Insights from Chicago.” 

Rose, Jeff. 2017. “Developing and Sequencing Community Engagement and Experiential Education: A Case Study of Urban Geography Teaching and Research.” 

Gribb, William J. 2017. “Field Experience through Community Engagement: A Model and Case Study.” 

Jung, Jin-Kyu. 2017. “Mapping Communities: Geographic and Interdisciplinary Community-Based Learning and Research.” 

Trudeau, Dan, Laura Smith, and Holly R. Barcus. 2017. “Coda: Making Geography Relevant.”

Highlights from the International Cartographic Conference, July 2-7 2017

On July 2-7 I was in Washington D.C. for my first ever International Cartographic Conference.
Matt Wilson and I presented on our project around the "Essentially Subjective" aspects of map design and I got to get a feel for what the ICA is all about. On my flight from D.C. to San Diego (I was selected to be a student assistant at the Esri UC) I luckily had enough sense about me to jot down some thoughts on presentations/moments of ICC that I found particularly compelling. After returning home from these back to back conferences (but seriously, who else is still trying to catch up on sleep??) I've finished polishing up those jottings and, after adding some pictures, they're ready for public consumption.

Though there were plenty of interesting talks, tours, and workshops to attend throughout the week of the ICC, there are five presentations that, for one reason or another, resonated with me and my work. I'd like to take a moment to highlight the work of these awesome researchers and cartographers here. In the order of their occurrence, they are....

 3511.2 hóhta’hané: Mapping Genocide & Restorative Justice In Native America - Annita Lucchesi Annita shared with us her experiences in her work which sets out to decolonize cartography through the creation maps which tell stories and offer opportunities for healing for/by/to Native American peoples. A woman of Southern Cheyenne descent, Annita’s work pushes the boundaries of previous conversations around indigenous mapping by employing the theory and tools of cartography on her own terms. As she proudly asserts, “For hundreds of years, settlers have been mapping indigenous lands without consultation or direction from those who know it best; I'm proud to take part in ending that power dynamic as an indigenous cartographer.” Throughout the presentation, she presents us with a series of maps on topics ranging from nationhood and human rights to trauma and genocide. For each map, Annita reveals the intentional design decisions she has made while creating each map- decisions which promote her goal of producing maps which “facilitate a dialogue on healing” and craft opportunities for “restorative justice for indigenous peoples.” I look forward to citing Annita’s work in my dissertation’s literature review to discuss the emancipatory effects of maps, especially ones that don’t align with traditional cartographic principles.

 4108.3 Cartograms in the Making: An Experiment in Aesthetic Design - Barry Kronenfeld and David Viertel While cartograms are most certainly a popular approach to data viz, Barry and David point out that there are an unlimited number of ways that one can stretch and pull the map to represent data values. As such, they set out to explore what kinds of cartographic forms (I might even refer to this as ‘distortion’) produces aesthetics which are pleasing to the eye. They begin by discussing a pilot study they completed with a small group of students. This pilot study attempted to uncover themes and patterns that might emerge from observing the students create cartograms. The results were inconclusive; however, by making some tweaks to the software students used to produce their cartograms, the study will continue and they’ll hopefully present another round of analysis/results at a future conference. The second portion of the talk consisted of a real time survey of audience members on their preferences toward different cartogram forms. For example, on the screen there would be two versions of the same state- each had been equally distorted though one was horizontally stretched and one that was vertically stretched. For almost all four questions there was a 2:1 preference for one of the options. This is super interesting and makes it clear that there are still many nooks and crannies cognitive science has yet to seep into throughout the world of map design. I look forward to seeing results from further study and gaining a further understanding around the role of aesthetics in map design. [sorry, Barry and David, for some reason all my pics of you turned out blurry!]

4610.1 Participatory Mapping: Evaluating Practice in Climate Change Projects in Caribbean Small Island Developing States - Alison DeGraff Ollivierre Alison presented on her robust Master’s thesis which makes two important advances in the field of participatory mapping. First, taking seriously that climate change is going to affect small island developing nations most significantly and that participatory mapping offers a source to understanding local needs for mitigating these effects, she has created a repository of all the climate focused participatory mapping projects that have been performed in the Caribbean. It is my understanding that Alison hopes that, by knowing what kind of local knowledge is currently known (or not known), future participatory mapping projects can be developed to expand (fill in the gaps) this knowledge. Second, noticing that not all projects working under the guise of “participatory mapping” are equal, she has developed a very detailed “best practices” for participatory mapping projects. These best practices work to ensure that local communities voices have the opportunity to be heard at every step of the mapping process. I look forward to engaging Alison’s work when establishing partnerships in the future.

 6210.1 A content analysis of climate change maps in the United States news media - Carolyn Fish What does climate change look like? Well, it depends on who you ask. Through the efforts of a meticulously detailed content analysis, Carolyn has set out to understand the visual rhetoric of maps employed to develop/support a narrative of climate change in the media. Her data set consists of 200 print/digital maps that representing the range of topics related to climate change, including causes, impacts, adaptation and mitigation strategies. These maps have been produced throughout the last six years by different agencies (NOAA, National Geographic, NASA, etc) found through a variety of sources (library databases, personal collections, social media). Through a process of multidimensional scaling, Carolyn is finding where salaries and differences occur across her coding results, revealing patterns that particular mapping agencies are falling into when working to contribute to the narrative around clime change. This presentation reflected a portion of Carolyn’s dissertation, which I look forward to reading in its entirety soon. I also plan to take up Carolyn’s methodology (adopted from Ian Muehlenhaus) and apply content analysis to maps produced through participatory projects.

 6703.3 What Color is Your Brain? - Sara Irina Fabrikant Sara presented on an absolutely fascinating on an experiment exploring the ways in which color influences perception. She begins by presenting with two choropleth maps which, except for the color (one is varying values of blue, one is varying values of red) the maps are exactly the same. She explains how people trust the map that is blue more than the one that is red. From here, I’m leaning forward, totally enthralled by where this is going! Sara and her collaborators set out to survey three groups of people (neuroscientists, geographers, and folks who weren’t experts in either of these areas) to see how different color schemes impacted participants’ judgments of the trustworthiness of data being visualized through either maps and brain scan images. While it was predicted that experts would be least susceptible to be affected by a particular color scheme, neuroscientists were more likely to trust rainbow color schemes and that geographers exhibited the largest differences between color preference and trust ratings. After seeing this talk, I am interested in completing my own experiment to judge the perceptions of maps which are produced through participatory projects.

Some other highlights of the week:
I got to spend some time promoting the New Maps Plus program with Matt.

I got to see some amazing work made both by  amateur and professional cartographers.

Aaaaand, I got to sing the conference anthem at the opening ceremonies. As you can tell from the picture, I totally loved it and want to do it again.

For some final thoughts, I'd like to come clean about a major disappointment I faced while attending this conference. While I was excited to attend a meeting that was catered to a global audience, I couldn't help but notice how tilted the scale was in favor of white male attendees. I urge my fellow cartographers to reflect on what it is they themselves can be doing to increase the diversity of our meetings. I urge my fellow cartographers to reflect on what it is we can be doing as an organization to increase the diversity of our meetings. We can and must do better.

Video: For the Essentially Subjective Elements of Cartography, 1953-1995

A few weeks back Matthew W. Wilson and I presented at the 2017 ICC. See below for both the video and slides.

Abstract: The tendency within more colloquial histories of cartography in the United States is to consider the work of the 20th century as a progressive development of cartographic efficacy, from techniques in hand-drawn mapmaking through functionalistic thematic mapping principles to computational and analytical cartography and geographic information systems. A key figure of these more colloquial narratives around the history of cartography in the latter half of the last century is Arthur Robinson. We can witness the 'trouble' of cartographic efficacy in Robinson's writing, particularly around what he considers 'essentially subjective' aspects of cartographic design and map use. This ‘trouble’ remains in different intensities throughout cartographic pedagogy. Our presentation will discuss analysis of 65 years since his published book The Look of Maps, and argue that, alongside this tendency toward ever progressive cartographic efficacy has been a somewhat nascent grappling with what might be meant by 'cartographic aesthetics'. As such, we attempt to conceptualize a wider notion of aesthetics in map design -- one that incorporates the 'unintelligible' aspects of nonetheless effective cartographic objects -- and discuss implications of such a conceptualization for the practice of critical mapping.

For the Essentially Subjective Elements of Cartography, 1953-1995 from Amber Bosse

Looking Good vs. Doing Good: The Rub Between Cartographic Design and Participatory GIS

Abstract: Participatory GIS has developed in far-reaching, sometimes contradictory, ways since its emergence in the mid-1990s (Elwood 2006, Sieber 2006, Radil and Jiao 2016). We observe this progress by tracing improvements in methods for data collection and analysis made possible by the emergence of mobile and web-based mapping technologies, open-source software, and big data. In the face of all this advancement, however, little work has been done to understand the effects of ‘participation’ on visualization and map design. This presentation attempts to fill this gap by examining the disciplining of ‘cartographic aesthetics’ and considering how the privileging of a particular ‘look of maps’ has profound impacts for participatory GIS.

I begin my analysis by offering a literature review of participatory mapping. Juxtaposing this review with my experiences as a participant observer at the NACIS Annual Meeting, I suggest that we continue to assign greater values to ‘beautiful’ maps. This mindset makes clear that we’ve fallen short of Sarah Elwood’s assertion: “[an] expanded notion of visualization is important as a conceptual framework under which critical GIScience might examine a fuller range of ways that knowledge and power are negotiated in and through participatory GIS (2006, 704). As such, I consider how we, as practitioners of participatory GIS working in the realm of digital geographies, might begin to privilege frameworks which value maps for the work they do in the world and not how “beautiful” they are

Looking Good vs. Doing Good: The Rub Between Cartographic Design and Participatory GIS from Amber Bosse

Cartography for Communities: An Examination of Participatory Action Mapping | Master's Thesis

Though I'm a bit hesitant to do this since the document is riddled with embarrassing typos, I'd like to use this post to link to my Master's thesis and provide a more transparent linage of my current thinking. I defended this thesis, titled "Cartography for Communities: An Examination of Participatory Action Mapping" (link to download found here) back in the summer of 2015. The research reflected here was performed under the advisement of Katherine Hankins (along with support from committee members Andy Walter and Dan Deocampo) (note that all remaining errors/typos are completely my own). 

Though the reading, writing, collaborating, map making, and presenting I completed for this project technically wrapped up over two years ago now, it is becoming increasingly clear to me how much those experiences have made today's project possible. More specifically, my mapping collaboration with the Westside Atlanta Land Trust forced me to confront moments of negotiation around the production of the map that that made me feel uneasy. Despite all the literature I had encountered around PPGIS/PAR/community mapping, there remain many aspects of the process that  I felt completely unprepared to handle. Let me be clear: I don't expect that reading articles in the grad office is going to ensure that you're ready to face every situation that comes your way when performing research. But I do think there are a number of significant areas in the PPGIS literature where we are essentially painting over in the same part of the canvas and over again, leaving swaths of the surface untouched. 

For my Master's project,  I worked to not so much cover a blank spot on the canvas as much as further expose a blemish hidden in the current painting and, taking a Bob Ross approach, model for future practitioners of PPGIS a template on how to avoid sullying their creations in similar ways. I'm speaking here about the applications of PPGIS which have been used to simply further marginalize the individuals who are being mapped. Through the veil of "participatory" mapping , some maps are produced and presented as representing the perspectives of "the people" but, in reality, have been constructed to simply reify the needs/wants of the ones in power. Through the development of what Katherine and I have named Participatory Action Mapping (PAM), I offer a new framework for folks (communities, researchers, cartographers, geographers, etc.) who are wanting to participate in/lead a community focused mapping project that enables participants have one foot in the applied mapping world and one food in the critical cartography world.

Today, as I develop my dissertation, I aim to fill in these areas of naked canvas through much more direct means. Whether it's by exploring PPGIS's relationship with cartographic tradition and principles, revealing our perceptions of participatory produced artifacts, or developing modes and methods for measuring "success" of PPGIS projects, my goal is to help paint a more complete picture of participatory mapping. The more complete our picture is, the more empowered we are in employing these methods in emancipatory ways. 

 Future blog posts will undoubtedly outline the colors, tools, and brush strokes I'll be using along the way. Stay tuned :)