Abstract
Mapping, both as a metaphor and as a method, is a crucial tool for the humanities and social sciences. In particular, it has a central position in the so-called spatial turn. In the article, I problematize spatiality in mapping concepts related to the spatial turn. Using the example of locating the centre of a city, I point out the complexity of a mapping-like spatial description, and the respective necessity to consider the variability of spatiality involved in descriptions and already present in the object domain; that is, in the sociocultural world. Positioning mapping in the wider and complex field of semiotic spatial modelling helps to clarify and improve the modelling capacity and adequacy of mapping as a method in social and cultural research.
This work is supported by research project IUT2-44
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Notes
- 1.
There is a terminological issue in applying Kralemann’s and Lattmann’s definitions of mapping as modelling. In the very core of their conception of model, relating features of the object and of the representamen, one can find an undefined concept of mapping – suggesting a potential circularity in the definition. However, if understood as establishing a representational relationship between syntactic attributes of the model and modelled attributes of the object, such mapping is not necessarily understood as spatial modelling by Kralemann and Lattmann. The potential of circularity would then be irrelevant for the present discussion.
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Remm, T. (2018). Reconsidering Mapping from the Perspective of Semiotic Spatial Modelling. In: Andreica, O., Olteanu, A. (eds) Readings in Numanities. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66914-4_16
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