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 :)
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