Rethinking the Power of Maps

Denis Wood

Apr 2010 · Guilford Press

About this ebook

A contemporary follow-up to the groundbreaking Power of Maps, this book takes a fresh look at what maps do, whose interests they serve, and how they can be used in surprising, creative, and radical ways. Denis Wood describes how cartography facilitated the rise of the modern state and how maps continue to embody and project the interests of their creators. He demystifies the hidden assumptions of mapmaking and explores the promises and limitations of diverse counter-mapping practices today. Thought-provoking illustrations include U.S. Geological Survey maps; electoral and transportation maps; and numerous examples of critical cartography, participatory GIS, and map art.

About the author

Denis Wood, PhD, is an independent scholar living in Raleigh, North Carolina. He lectures widely and is the author of a dozen books and over 150 papers. From 1974 to 1996, he taught in the School of Design at North Carolina State University. In 1992, he curated the Power of Maps exhibition for the Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design (remounted at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, in 1994), for which he wrote the book The Power of Maps. His other books include Rethinking the Power of Maps; Making Maps, Third Edition (coauthored with John Krygier); and Weaponizing Maps (coauthored with Joe Bryan).

John Fels, PhD, until his death in 2014, was Adjunct Associate Professor in the Graduate GIS Faculty at North Carolina State University. He worked as a professional cartographer with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and as a freelance cartographic designer and consultant, and developed and taught the core design curriculum in the Cartography Program at Sir Sandford Fleming College in Ontario. Dr. Fels was the author of the North Carolina Watersheds map and also coauthor (with Denis Wood) of The Natures of Maps.

John Krygier, PhD, teaches in the Department of Geology and Geography at Ohio Wesleyan University, with teaching and research specializations in cartography, geographic information systems (GIS), and environmental and human geography. He has published on map design, educational technology, cultural geography, multimedia in cartography, planning, the history of cartography, and participatory GIS.