Abstract

This paper analyzes the close connections

between map, territory and landscape in
order to create a theoretical framework for
landscape studies. Thanks to various technical
and conceptual advances, the ideas of map
and cartography have been expanded and
refined during the last decades. Although this
development has been motivated by a wide array
of professional disciplines, geography appears
to be the one that has focused the most in
theorizing about the concept and application of
maps. As a result, recent notions have emerged
from this discipline that allow us to construct
a rich theoretical framework that provides a
means to re-examine landscape practice, theory
and research. The aim of this section is to
analyze how the relationship between space and
representation has changed over the course of
the 20th century.
To do that, we will examine three quotes about
the map-territory relation:
-- A map is not the territory (Alfred Korzybski,
1931)
-- Maps are territories (David Turnbull, 1989)
-- Maps and mappings precede the territory
(John Pickles, 2004)
From here, the second section of this paper aims
to set a theoretical framework for landscape
studies. The third quote brings forth a conceptual
shift from cartography as a finished object
(map) to cartography as a process (mapping).
Map vs. Recent theories (Pickles, Crampton, Kitchin and
Mappings: Dodge) define ‘mappings’ as a set of spatial
An Approach practices ad hoc that reciprocally evolve with the
to Landscape territory they represent. This way, we can enrich
Studies Based our understanding of historic landscapes by
on Recent approaching their morphogenesis as inseparable
Conceptual from its successive ‘mappings’.
Shifts in Finally, the paper concludes that if territory is
Cartographic
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a system of relations, then mappings actively

Theory participate in constructing this system as
.

performative practices. Furthermore, if landscape

ECLAS Conference 2017

Nicolas Marine
Technical University of Madrid
is the physical form that derives from the way
mankind relates to the environment, mappings
Keywords: have played and continue to play a fundamental
.

part in the creation of that landscape. In this way,

cartography, maps, mappings,
827

cultural landscapes, geography

 we can enrich our understanding of historical
landscapes by approaching their morphogenesis
as being inseparable from its successive
‘mappings.’

The three territories

Thanks to various technical and conceptual
advances, the ideas of map and cartography
have been expanded and refined during the
last decades. Although this development has
been motivated by a wide array of professional
disciplines, geography appears to be the one
that has focused the most in theorizing about
the concept and application of maps. As a result,
recent notions have emerged from this discipline
that allow us to construct a rich theoretical
framework that provides a means to re-examine
landscape practice, theory and research. The aim
of this section is to analyze how the relationship
between space and representation has changed
over the course of the 20th century. To do that,
we will examine three quotes about the map-
territory relation.

A map is not the territory

This expression was first formulated in 1931 by
Alfred Korzybski, a Polish-American scientist and
philosopher who developed a field called General
Semantics. Although it was used as an analogy
to describe the shortcomings of language and the
human brain, it took on a life of its own, becoming
one of the most referenced quotes by the author.
In 1933, he included the idea in his vast work
Science and Sanity. The complete citation is as
follows:
A map is not the territory it represents, but,
if correct, it has a similar structure to the
territory, which accounts for its usefulness.
If the map could be ideally correct, it would
include, in a reduced scale, the map of the
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map; map of the map, of the map; and so on,

endlessly. [1]
.

That is to say, an abstraction derived from

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something is not the thing itself. For the author,

the concept of ‘territory’ is identified with
reality, while that of ‘map’ is associated with its
.

image. Thus, if there is an objective reality, the

828
correctness of that image would reside in its
scientific precision. His objective vision of the
concepts of ‘territory’ and ‘map’ represented
a well-established positivistic stance in
mapmaking that would not be contested until the
last quarter of the 20th century.
For the sake of this paper, we can summarize
his position as follows: the territory (an objective
reality) precedes the map (its unbiased
representation).

Maps are territories

The next quote is the title of a book published
in 1989 by scholar David Turnbull. It was the
result of a two year ‘systematic review of cross-
cultural content in the History, Philosophy and
Social Studies of Science’ [2] through the idea
of a map. In his review of the book, Denis Wood
praised the fact that maps that would be rejected
as inaccurate by western scientific community
were studied at the same level as those taken
as a canon [3]. This is precisely the foundation
of Turnbull’s thesis: the questioning of western
objectivity by showing, through maps of other
cultures, that:
What actually counts as the relative location
of particular objects may not be quite
so basic and may constitute one of the
variables that differentiate the way cultures
experience the world. That is to say, in any
culture, what counts as a natural object and
its spatial relations, rather than being an
invariant characteristic of the world, may
instead form part of that culture’s world
view. [4]
Here, we can see a clear opposition to Korzybski’s
ideas. ‘Territory’ and ‘map’ are not objective
notions anymore, but complex constructs highly
dependent on each culture. Furthermore, Turnbull
also questions the relation between the two
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concepts: for him, maps play such a central

role in our understanding of space that they
.

cannot be separated. There is no such thing as a

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‘territory’ from which we derive ‘maps’, but rather

a situation of mutual dependence. Thus, maps are
territories.
.

This book and its author can be placed

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 together with other geographers like Wood,
Harley or Woodward, that belong to a school
of thought in which the map is seen as a tool
for power and control. If maps have the ability
to determine our understanding of space,
deliberate representations could be imposed on
a culture so that a biased idea of territory could
prevail. In Turnbull’s work, this is accentuated
by his Australian origins and his knowledge of
aboriginal cartography, which in many occasions
is contrasted with western maps of the same
land.

Maps and mappings precede the territory

Already in the 21th century, John Pickles
formulates this idea in his book A History of
Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping, and the
Geo-coded World. In it, he provides an insight
into how maps and map-making have shaped the
spaces in which we live. His theoretical position
is presented as an evolution from the ideas of
both Korzybski and Turnbull. As he writes:
Early empiricist readings of maps (where
maps were seen to be the unproblematic
representation of an external reality)
have thus increasingly been replaced by
reductionist readings of the powers of and
in maps. These have been productive in
the ways in which they have challenged
empiricist and technicist readings of maps,
but limiting in their tendency to reduce
theories of mapping to theories of power. [5]
He instead derives from the ideas of Jean
Baudrillard and, especially, Geoff King, to whom
he quotes: ‘Map and territory cannot ultimately
be separated. Cultural mappings play a central
role in establishing the territories we inhabit and
experience as real’ [6]. From this, he presents his
stance:
Instead of thinking of the map as the product
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of a territory or a passive representation of it,

King (with Baudrillard) suggest a strategic
.

reversal; it is the map that engenders

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territory. The notion of the real as something

existing in its own right is no longer tenable.
The real is not only what can be produced,
.

but that which is already reproduced. [7]

830
That is to say, previously known images take
precedent in our notion of the real. This allows us
to sum-up this section of the paper by saying that
the map-territory relation has evolved throughout
the 20th century. Departing from ‘A map is not the
territory’, a clear distinction between a symbol-
map and a pretend reality-territory that sustains
a position of objective scientific representation;
we have moved to ‘Maps are territories’, the
idea of a joint understanding that gives way to
ideologically laden representations, and, finally,
to ‘Maps and mappings precede the territory’ an
understanding of territory that builds up from its
successive imaging.

Maps. Mappings. Territories. Landscapes.

The work of Turnbull brings forth an interesting
question when he equates all forms of map-
making. As Wood noted, his work puts together
the ‘marginal’ maps with those at the ‘core’
[8]. This tendency already had an important
precedent in 1987, when Harley and Woodward
started publishing their ambitious opus The
History of Cartography. In it, as in the work
of Turnbull, we find a collection of maps that
indistinctly gathers together the works of
western mapmakers with indigenous mapping,
narrative traditions of space and other forms of
unconventional cartography.
For Pickles, this change highlighted the limit of
traditional cartography:
Indigenous mappings do not necessarily
have the same kinds of materiality and
reproducibility as do western maps, and
what constitutes a map and a mapping
practice is not necessarily the same across
cultures. […] Thus, in the latest volume in the
History of Cartography, ‘mapping’ instead of
‘map-making’ has been used to determine
what counts as a map. [9]
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Making all forms of cartography equal has

diminished the domain of illustrated empiricism
.

in favor of performative practices through which

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cultures structure and represent their world

spatially. A conceptual shift has been established
in the last decade: from cartography as a
.

finished object (map) to cartography as a process

831
 (mapping). Recent theories define ‘mappings’
as a set of spatial practices ad hoc that change
together with our performance in space:
Maps are never fully formed and their work
is never complete. Maps are of-the-moment,
beckoned into being through practices; they
are always mapping. […] This theoretical
turn has led us to suggest that cartography
is processual, not representational, in nature.
[… ] Cartography becomes understood as
the pursuit of representational solutions to
solve relational, spatial problems. [10]
‘Map’ and ‘territory’ cannot be understood as pre-
existing conditions without the other. Both are
cultural constructions that reciprocally determine
our relation to space. As Professor Laura Kurgan
has put it, maps ‘function somehow like extensions
of ourselves […] they have become infrastructures
and systems and we are located, however
insecurely, within them’. [11]
Having established the role that maps and
mappings play, a closer look at the concept
of ‘territory’ is necessary. As we have seen,
geographers have established that it is a cultural
construct in which both the physicality of space
and its representation participate. But, some
authors like Painter [12], have gone a bit further
than that, defining territory as an effect arising
from various practices that result in a delimited
space. Territory ‘is better conceived as an art or
practice rather than an object or physical space’
[13].
These ideas are along the same lines of those of
Spanish geographer Eduardo Martínez de Pisón.
To him, territory can be defined as a relational
space, in other words, as the relations that
mankind establishes with its environment in a
given moment, with the intention of surviving
or prospering. The aspect that differentiates his
ideas from the rest is that he then proceeds to link
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this notion of ‘territory’ with that of ‘landscape’.

Whereas territory is the operative space reserved
.

to strategy, landscape is the physical and emotional

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result of those operations. It is the accumulation of

events translated into a physical form that allows
us to relate to our past. As Martínez de Pisón
.

states: ‘in a territory people undoubtedly survive,

832
prosper or fight; in a landscape people find its
identity’ [14].

Conclusion: Towards a Possible Theoretical

Framework for Landscape Studies
From the previous section, we can draw
correspondences between the ideas posed. First,
we can now look at cartography not only as a
producer of ‘maps’, or inmutable repositories of
information, but also ‘mappings’, processual key
elements of change. Second, we can understand
the notion of territory as a system of relations
between man and its surroundings. Third,
mappings actively participate in the construction
of territories to the point that our idea of a place
and the way we relate to it is influenced both
by the phenomena that surround us and its
representation. In other words, we can derive
that mappings actively participate in construing
as performative practices the system of relation
between us and the environment.
Furthermore, if landscape is the physical form
that derives from the way mankind relates to
its environment, mappings have played and
continue to play a fundamental part in the
creation of that landscape. In this way, we can
enrich our understanding of historical landscapes
by approaching their morphogenesis as being
inseparable from its successive ‘mappings’.

[1] Korzybski, A. 1994. Science and Sanity. New

York: Institute of General Semantics, p58. (First
edition originally published in 1933)
[2] Turnbull, D. 2008. Maps are Territories.
Introduction to online exhibition: http://territories.
indigenousknowledge.org/
[3] Wood, D. 1991. Maps are territories/Review
article. Cartographica, vol 28, nº 2, pp73-80.
[4] Turnbull, D. 1989. Maps are Territories: Science
is an Atlas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
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p2.
[5] Pickles, J. 2003. A History of Spaces.
.

Cartographic reason, mapping and the geo-coded

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world. London and New York: Routledge, p29.

[6] King, G. 1996. Cited in ibíd. p31.
[7] Ibíd. p31.
.

[8] Wood, D. 1991. Maps are territories/Review

833
 article. Cartographica, vol 28, nº 2, p76.
[9] Pickles, J. 2003. A History of Spaces.
Cartographic reason, mapping and the geo-coded
world. London and New York: Routledge, p16.
[10] Kitchin, R. & Dodge, M. 2007. Rethinking
maps. Progress in Human Geography, 31, p13.
[11] Kurgan, L. 2013. Close Up at a Distance:
Mapping, Technology, and Politics. Cambridge:
MIT Press, p14.
[12] Painter J. 2010. Rethinking territory, Antipode,
42(5), pp. 1090–1118.
[13] Brighenti A. 2010. On territorology: Towards
a general science of territory, Theory, Culture &
Society, 27(1), p53.
[14] Translated by the author from the Spanish ‘En
el territorio sin duda sobrevive, prospera o lucha
un pueblo; en el paisaje encuentra su identidad’
in Martinez de Pison, E. 2006. Los componentes
geográficos del paisaje in Marchán, S. and
Maderuelo, J. (eds.) Paisaje y pensamiento. Madrid:
Abada editors, p133.
Proceedings
.
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