Matthew H. Edney. Cartography. The Ideal and Its History. xiii + 309 pp., figs., bibl., index. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019. $30.00 (paper), ISBN 9780226605685.
Matthew Edney @ USM
Matthew Edney @ Mapping As Process
University of Chicago Press Book Information
Book Review by John Krygier published in Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society—Volume 111, Number 1, March 2020 (pp. 207-208)
There is no such thing as cartography, and this is a book about it. (p. 1)
Matthew Edney’s Cartography: The Ideal and its History provides a necessary corrective to the normative ideal of maps, mapping and the field of cartography. While of interest to scholars in the history of cartography, Edney’s book is just as important to the growing number of scholars whose research engages maps and mapping as part of diverse studies of culture, society and human history. Cartography: The Ideal and its History details problematic assumptions about maps, mapping and cartography, but it’s the creative potential of Edney’s book that’s most notable. As untenable assumptions are discarded, new insights emerge, insights which have the potential to greatly expand our understanding of maps and mapping across many different studies and disciplines.
Edney’s Cartography is situated in the intermingled fields of the history of cartography and critical cartography with touchstones including The History of Cartography, Book 1, edited by J.B. Harley and David Woodward (1987), Harley’s “Deconstructing the Map” (1989) and Denis Wood’s The Power of Maps (1992). These works, and many that followed, undermined narrow definitions of the map and broadened our understanding of the cultural, social and political context of mapping. Edney’s work as editor of later volumes of the History of Cartography, extensive publications on maps from Europe, North America and India as well as critical cartography make him an ideal scholar to take on the ideal of cartography. He does so by characterizing the traditional study of maps and mapping as “a profound act of cultural misdirection.” Maps and mapping are more complex, nuanced and disjunct than the universalizing, idealized conceptions offered by modern cartography, a thesis strongly supported by Edney’s immersion in diverse historical maps and mapping practices.
The most appealing parts of Cartography: The Ideal and its History are the delineation of fourteen modes of Western mapping and an intellectual assault on cartography’s idealized preconceptions. These issues are addressed in the first third of the book, prefaced by a discussion of the ideal and its limitations. Mapping modes include place, urban, property, engineering, chorographical, cosmographical, geographical, marine, celestial, boundary, geodetic, analytic, and overhead imaging. The concept of modes shifts focus away from a singular, idealized map (and map making process) to distinct (but evolving and interrelated) map types and processes that are better understood free of the narrow, idealized context within which they are typically situated. Cartography’s idealized preconceptions include ontology, pictorialness, individuality, materiality, observation, efficacy, discipline, publicity, morality and singularity & universality. In each case, Edney describes, critiques, and offers alternatives to these preconceptions. With the concept of mapping modes and critique of preconceptions in place, an intellectually sophisticated, nuanced and creative understanding of maps and mapping processes can play out.
Chapter 4, The Ideal of Cartography, details the construction of cartography as “a modern myth.” The chapter weaves in references to mapping modes and idealized preconceptions. One is left, upon finishing this chapter, with a history of the construction of modern cartography as well as an understanding of its limitations. Chapter 5 critiques the idealized geometry at the heart of modern cartography, specifically map scale. Much like maps and cartography in general, it is easy to naturalize map scale. This chapter, like the rest of the book, brings a sense of unease: many seemingly natural aspects of our common understanding of cartography are carefully constructed myths.
Cartography: The Ideal and its History is scholarly, well-written and a significant contribution to the history of science. It covers some ground explored by other recent scholars (including Matthew Wilson’s 2017 New Lines) but with a stronger footing in historical scholarship. Edney’s mapping modes and idealized preconceptions provide actionable ideas which are often lacking in critical cartography literature. It’s not clear, however, if Edney’s work will have much of an impact on modern mapping practitioners (cartography, geographic information systems, Geospatial technology) or academics in these technical fields. The myth of cartography is, if anything, functional and serves the needs of particular people and groups (property ownership, the military, government bureaucracy, business, etc.). Online mapping and navigational tools, such as Google Maps, are rife with problems (such as the inclusion of fake businesses that generate income for Google and for companies who pay to have these businesses on the map). Alas, people find such services useful and don’t really think the maps and information they engage with are anything other than an image of the real world. At the very least, scholars should not fall into the same trap: Matthew Edney’s Cartography: The Ideal and its History provides a corrective, a reimagined intellectual framework for maps and mapping that will, when engaged and operationalized, greatly broaden our understanding of the wondrous array of inscriptions and practices we call maps and mapping.
John Krygier
Professor of Geography
Ohio Wesleyan University
Delaware, OH. 43015
jbkrygier@owu.edu
