A (Brief) History of Understanding Space and Place

Abstract

The primary consideration of this chapter is how maps and other location technologies are representations of how humans have considered territory over time, and as such a reflection of how place has been understood over time. The purpose of this chapter is to offer a selective outline of the historical development of mapping systems and technologies from early ancient maps of the pre-Socratic Greek era to the development of Ordnance Survey maps in Great Britain, Global Positioning System technology and databases of places. In doing this, the stages of cartography are contrasted and paralleled with dominant expressions and forms of knowledge and understanding of the world that dominated both formal and lay epistemology at those times. As such, the map and technique of mapping becomes an extension of (although not a causal extension) of forms of knowledge that are dominant at a particular time — a cartographic biopower, to borrow from Foucault, referring to the regulation of subjects through mapping techniques. These changes over time are articulated in the aims and objectives of mapping projects, in the scope of the maps proposed and in the methods used to create maps, from military organised programmes to the open digital mapping and crowdsourced mapping that occurs today with location-based social networking.