Article

Favelas and the divided city: Mapping silences and calculations in Rio de Janeiro's journalistic cartography

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Abstract

This article aims to challenge the widespread consensus that Rio de Janeiro is a divided city by deploying two concepts in critical cartography: cartographic silences and cartographic calculations. As a kind of unconquered territory, a terrae incognitae, favelas were silenced on many of Rio de Janerio's maps over the last century. When these places began to be mapped, and converted to terrae cognitae, power relations often become even more apparent because of the intention to make it legible for purposes of intervention. By analyzing maps published in the mainstream Brazilian press throughout the last century, this article explores how national press often portrays Rio de Janeiro as a city divided between formal neighborhoods, where the state apparatus can ensure the rule of law, and favelas, where parallel politics enforce local forms of governance. In order to disseminate this image of the city, maps can play an important role, locating different urban zones and reinforcing old stereotypes. Despite many studies that focused on both material and embodied forms of state presence within favelas, maps can be an important source of information to understand persistant representations of favelas as excluded and divided places.

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... According to Fahlberg and Vicino (2016), the polarisation of the city between the rich and the poor is institutionalised through slum policy. The creation of the other is spatialized in this process (Novaes, 2014). ...
... In the case studies analysed, this political choice can be seen in the non-publication and non-collection of statistical data about slums. The IBGE has been collecting data on informal settlements since the 1950s (Novaes, 2014;Perlman, 2004), however only in 2010 did it produce a dedicated profiling of favelas nation-wide. Statistics South Africa defines informal settlements as "An unplanned settlement on land which has not been surveyed or proclaimed as residential, consisting mainly of informal dwellings (shacks)" (Housing Development Agency, 2013). ...
... In the case of Rio de Janeiro, walls were constructed around some favelas to stop access to the woods. Favelas were identified as responsible for the city's deforestation and environmental problems (Novaes, 2014). The mobilisation of the environmental discourse that led to the construction of walls around favelas transforms an act of social and physical exclusion into an ethical issue, framed as "deforestation is bad for everyone" (Novaes, 2014). ...
Article
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... In light of the 2016 Olympics and the multimillion-dollar infrastructure invested for re-shaping the city and its image, it is more urgent than ever to understand the relationship of favelas with the city of Rio de Janeiro as a whole. So far, analyses of the network structure of favelas have been mainly visual with only recent maps representing the actual conditions (Novaes 2014). Thus few findings have been supported by precise quantitative evidence combined with visual representation. ...
... The growth of Rio de Janeiro and its informal settlements has been strongly influenced by public policies, the development of academic discourse (Valladares 2008) and critical cartography (Novaes 2014). It is true 2 This refers to Bill Hillier's theoretical concept of the generic city, a structure that is defined by a foreground network of linked centres, set into a background network of residential areas. ...
Conference Paper
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... Yet, there are still many reasons why remaining off the map might be viewed as advantageous, especially by those who want to maintain their privacy or conduct activities outside the gaze of the camera (Novaes 2014). For example, in his inquiry into unmapped "black ops" sites used for interrogation by US intelligence personnel, Trevor Paglen (2009, 276-277) proposed that blank spots on the map have helped create blank spots in the law. ...
Article
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... 3 Nevertheless, as a result of this inclusionary rhetoric, so architect Gabriel Duarte (2016) remembers, urban planners started to '[survey] and [document] various Rio favelas to inform the planning and design decisions that were being made', for example, in the programmes Favela-Bairro in the 1990s, Programa de Aceleração e Crescimento (PAC) in 2007, and the favela pacification from 2008 onwards. Especially in this last programme, however, maps have also been employed to illustrate the renewed control of the state over some favela territories (Reyes Novaes, 2014). ...
... Through them, readers were told where the political and economic centers of the world lay, and which language was the lingua franca of a map in addition to the cartographic one. It is well known that colonial maps did not include indigenous place names, and even Google Maps maintained cartographic silence (Quinn 2020) when it avoided showing favelas in the city of Rio de Janeiro (Novaes 2014). The choice of projection, selection, and limitation of the area shown on the map contributed (un)willingly to this. ...
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... Favelas are distinct, irregular, unplanned communities in Brazil (Williamson 2017;Novaes 2014). Long derived as "slums," the domain of the poor and criminal organizations, favelas are characterized by selfhelp construction methods and inadequate access to public services. ...
... How actions and resources to mitigate risk are socially distributed, how different communities are treated including in terms of who is allowed to stay "in place" and who is removed, and who has the power to shape and influence resilience decision-making are all key justice concerns. Hurricane Katrina in the USA catalysed connections between environmental justice activism and disaster management, with both the relocation of affected residents and decisions about returning to and redeveloping areas at risk controversial in terms of the fractures of race and wealth these processes highlighted (Bullard and Wright, 2009;Morse, 2008). Other cases, for example centred on the impact of sea level rise on low-lying islands, have similarly generated intense debate about the just enactment of consent in relocation strategies for affected communities (Barnett and Campbell, 2009) and the importance of realising relocation in a way that does not destroy senses of community, identity and heritage. ...
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... Dada la autoridad del mapa para presentarse como un reflejo de la realidad, el hecho de no aparecer en los mapas implica, en cierto sentido, que esos lugares no existen o no son importantes. Estos silencios pueden llegar a afectar de manera particular a algunos espacios urbanos (y por extensión a los colectivos que viven en ellos) que, por su informalidad, ilegalidad o posición no se consideran como lugares con las mismas características urbanas o relevancia que otro tipo de asentamientos y edificaciones más estables, como por ejemplo las "favelas", o los asentamientos informales (Stickler 1990;Novaes 2014). ...
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La geografía urbana crítica se encuentra en una posición privilegiada para aprovechar las oportunidades que ofrece la transición digital cartográfica. Para conseguir este objetivo es necesario, sin embargo, desarrollar unas prácticas cartográficas renovadas y creativas. En este artículo destacamos algunas aportaciones, realizadas desde la denominada cartografía crítica, útiles para entender las limitaciones que impone el mapa como herramienta de investigación. También identificamos algunos ejemplos cartográficos que muestran las ventajas de representar el espacio social urbano desde concepciones espaciales diversas. Una aproximación cartográfica más reflexiva e imaginativa puede ser útil también para aquellas personas y colectivos que empiezan a realizar mapas sin mucha experiencia cartográfica previa ni conocimientos formales sobre los efectos que tienen los mapas sobre la realidad que tratan de representar.
... How actions and resources to mitigate risk are socially distributed, how different communities are treated including in terms of who is allowed to stay "in place" and who is removed, and who has the power to shape and influence resilience decision-making are all key justice concerns. Hurricane Katrina in the USA catalysed connections between environmental justice activism and disaster management, with both the relocation of affected residents and decisions about returning to and redeveloping areas at risk controversial in terms of the fractures of race and wealth these processes highlighted (Bullard and Wright, 2009;Morse, 2008). Other cases, for example centred on the impact of sea level rise on low-lying islands, have similarly generated intense debate about the just enactment of consent in relocation strategies for affected communities (Barnett and Campbell, 2009) and the importance of realising relocation in a way that does not destroy senses of community, identity and heritage. ...
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Full-text available
Environmental and climate justice scholarship has increasingly focused on how knowledge and expertise play into the production of injustice and into strategies of resistance and activist claim making. We consider the epistemic injustice at work within the practices of risk mapping and assessment applied in Rio de Janeiro to justify the clearance of favela communities. We trace how in the wake of landslides in 2010, the city authorities moved towards a removal policy justified in the name of protecting lives and becoming resilient to climate change. We examine how favela dwellers, activists and counter-experts joined efforts to develop a partially successful epistemic resistance that contested the knowledge on which this policy was based. We use this case to reflect on the situated character of both technologies of risk and the emergence of epistemic resistance, on the relationship between procedural and epistemic justice, and on the challenges for instilling more just climate adaptation strategies.
... The favelas are heterogenous. It is a myth that the state has been completely absent from these areas (Novaes, 2014). The PPG narratives presented are specific to Ipanema and Copacabana. ...
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... É por isso que as favelas e suas autoconstruções inúmeras vezes são apresentadas não somente como ameaça social e ambiental, mas também estética e construtiva: feias, sujas, mal construídas, insalubres, inseguras e ilegais, o lugar do ócio e da marginalidade à espera de melhorias e reestruturações e/ou controle e supressão (Abreu, 1997;Sevcenko, 1998;Novaes, 2014;Rodrigues, 2016). A laje, nesse contexto, não é percebida como elemento de um projeto que lhe atribui um espectro quase infinito de papéis: espaço de congregação e socialização, para usufruto do tempo do não trabalho. ...
Article
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... Literally, random or unplanned areas, including slums(Ibrahim, 2017; O'Donnell, 2010).2 Literally, chanty town or a slum(Novaes, 2014). ...
Article
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... Favelas are distinct, irregular, unplanned communities in Brazil (Williamson 2017;Novaes 2014). Long derived as "slums," the domain of the poor and criminal organizations, favelas are characterized by selfhelp construction methods and inadequate access to public services. ...
Article
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... Literally, random or unplanned areas, including slums(Ibrahim, 2017; O'Donnell, 2010).2 Literally, chanty town or a slum(Novaes, 2014). ...
Preprint
Full-text available
Identifying current and future informal regions within cities remains a crucial issue for policymakers and governments in developing countries. The delineation process of identifying such regions in cities requires a lot of resources. While there are various studies that identify informal settlements based on satellite image classification, relying on both supervised or unsupervised machine learning approaches, these models either require multiple input data to function or need further development with regards to precision. In this paper, we introduce a novel method for identifying and predicting informal settlements using only street intersections data, regardless of the variation of urban form, number of floors, materials used for construction or street width. With such minimal input data, we attempt to provide planners and policy-makers with a pragmatic tool that can aid in identifying informal zones in cities. The algorithm of the model is based on spatial statistics and a machine learning approach, using Multinomial Logistic Regression (MNL) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). The proposed model relies on defining informal settlements based on two ubiquitous characteristics that these regions tend to be filled in with smaller subdivided lots of housing relative to the formal areas within the local context, and the paucity of services and infrastructure within the boundary of these settlements that require relatively bigger lots. We applied the model in five major cities in Egypt and India that have spatial structures in which informality is present. These cities are Greater Cairo, Alexandria, Hurghada and Minya in Egypt, and Mumbai in India. The predictSLUMS model shows high validity and accuracy for identifying and predicting informality within the same city the model was trained on or in different ones of a similar context.
... Moving between analytical knowledge, theoretical speculation, various During the last century and despite public policy efforts to tackle informality in Rio de Janeiro, informal settlements have increased-more rapidly than the formal city-both in terms of number and size. 1 This process has been affected by three developments that touch upon public policies, critical cartography, and academic discourse. [1,15,23] Starting with the latter, there is an overriding perception that favelas are being socially, culturally, politically and economically excluded from the rest of the city. This has also shaped the spatial representation of Rio de Janeiro over the years, strengthening its impression as a 'divided city'. ...
Book
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The E-Merging Design Research module (EDR) is a new research/practice-based module in the SDAC MSc at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. This book is an investigation of informal settlements in Rio. The contributions provide a glimpse into a ‘self-organising’ urban system, accompanied by speculations about the potential for intervention and what forms those interventions might take.
... Soma-se a presença de corpos não brancos e, assim, paisagem e "raça" tornam-se os dois lados de uma mesma moeda: dados visuais capazes de servir a postulados imagéticos sobre dissonância, inferioridade ou exotismo (Name, 2013, p. 39). Ao 274 longo do tempo, as imagens desta paisagem-tipo da favela estiveram em meio a práticas de exibição e ocultamento: ora de seus atributos "singulares", "vernáculos" ou "autênticos", ora de tudo que nelas representa o indesejável, vexatório e recriminável por ser próprio do subdesenvolvimento e do atraso, mas que por isso mesmo necessariamente está à espera de melhorias urbanas e sociais (Cardoso, 2006;Duno Gottberg, 2010;Freire-Medeiros, 2009Freire-Medeiros e Menezes, 2009e 2016Novaes, 2014;Rodrigues, 2014Rodrigues, e 2017Vitale, 2013;). (Cohen, 1987;Collot, 1986;Giblin, 1978;Lacoste 1977;Sautter, 1979). ...
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Com base em um diálogo entre as reflexões produzidas no Paradigma das Novas Mobilidades e nos Estudos Decoloniais, examinamos os teleféricos que, na última década, passaram a compor a paisagem de áreas pobres e segregadas da América Latina. Partimos da premissa de que, no contexto do planejamento urbano estratégico, esse novo dispositivo de mobilidade é uma intervenção expressiva que gera competitividade devido aos novos marcos visuais que insere na paisagem e às novas imagens da pobreza que instituem. Muito mais que opções técnicas neutras para o transporte urbano, os teleféricos inauguram um regime visual que projeta uma ideia de modernidade e promete a mudança social, mas que na verdade convertem a pobreza, como diferença colonial, em valor estético e simbólico.
... No caso das favelas cariocas, essa estetização e idealização da imagem do espaço favelado se deram ao longo das últimas décadas, principalmente, por meio da fabricação de imaginários cotidianos, através de filmes urbanos que retratam o hibridismo cultural, fotografias e vídeos veiculados pela internet, narrativas urbanas transcritas nos textos midiáticos. Esses retratos da realidade das favelas, portanto, acabam sendo detentores de um realismo também fabricado e exótico (Alvarenga, 2013;Jaguaribe, 2007;Moreira, 2011;Novaes, 2014). ...
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Em uma era de prevalência das imagens, o turismo, como consumidor de espaços, apropria-se dos recursos visuais para promover e vender destinos turísticos. Apoiando-se nessa perspectiva, este artigo se propõe a debater criticamente a representação imagética das favelas nos guias visuais do turismo, utilizados pelos turistas para orientação no espaço urbano. O conteúdo conceitual sobre representação imagética e espacial fornece os fundamentos teóricos para que sejam analisados alguns modos pelos quais as favelas são representadas como parte da composição estética da paisagem da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. A teoria semiológica é adotada como um dos percursos metodológicos para este estudo.https://doi.org/10.14195/0871-1623_35_8
... The well-known phenomenon called urban favelization is characteristic of large cities like Sao Paolo, Brasilia, Fortaleza and Curitiba and its characteristics have been analyzed by the scientific literature from very different approaches (see Gilbert, 1995, pp. 91e122;Reyes Novaes, 2014 for example). ...
Article
One of the main factors of imbalance in the urban development of cities is undoubtedly their growth rate. In this sense, one of the main characteristics of rural-urban migration phenomena that have shaped the development of megacities in developing countries has been the need to integrate a large mass of people through processes of rapid growth of its urban plot. In this paper the growth of five different cities in Latin America is analyzed from the perspective of the impact of these processes of transformation in the urban landscape, describing different levels of pathology in their development. Consumption of periurban space, cityscape misconfiguration, or the long-term sustainability of these processes of transformation are complex issues that need to be addressed from a rigorous and technical perspective. These variables will be subject to GIS evaluation and diagnosis by territorial indicators in order to establish patterns of behaviour.
Book
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Urban Informality and the Built Environment demonstrates the value of greater and more diverse forms of engagement of built environment disciplines in what constitutes urban informality and its politics. It brings a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of informality and the built environment in diverse contexts, drawing on recent research by architects, planners, political scientists, geographers and urban theorists. The book presents different case studies from multiple geographies, drawing attention to the need for studying urban informality in the Global North and Global South. The cases promote a cross-fertilization between disciplines, lenses, geographies and methodologies. They range from the creative place-making of street artists in Accra, to the morphological evolution of urban Tirana, urban agriculture in la Habana and social reproduction in Greece. Additional contributions highlight the cross-cutting themes of infrastructure, exchange and image. Urban Informality and the Built Environment introduces built environment disciplines to its constitutive roles in producing urban informality. It also tests a range of new methodologies to the study of urban informality, demonstrating the possibilities for new insights when building on the relational understanding of urban informality.
Chapter
This chapter departs from a dialogue with Eve Sedgwick’s “Epistemology of the closet” and Ananya Roy’s criticism of the theorizations aimed at deciphering the megacities of the Global South. We propose an “epistemology of the laje (favela rooftop)” having the “Rio de Janeiro favela” as its main reference. Our hypothesis is that the laje, both in empirical and conceptual terms, destabilizes long-stand dualities: favela versus formal city, private space versus public space, legal versus illegal, universal versus vernacular, horizontal versus vertical.
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In this article, we scrutinize the concept of ‘urban informality’ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. By unpacking key moments in Rio’s history when conceptualizations of informal housing (i.e., favelas) changed, we explain why favelas have been understood in different ways over the last century. Our argument is that the concept of informality, while signaling an important shift in how favelas were understood, also perpetuated orientalist epistemologies in theories of urban development. This helps to explain why the term gained traction when it did, as well as why it remains salient today. In Rio, this means that changing understandings of favelas over the last century reveal little about actual changes within favelas, and more about how different geographic imaginaries were projected onto them, reflecting specific ‘problems’ confronting the city at different moments in history. This is important for seeing how conceptualizations of favelas – including the ways we understand urban informality – tend to mirror a host of latent social and political anxieties connected to urban development, including attempts to govern and control informal space.
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This article draws on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork to explore residents’ everyday experiences of urban militarisation in a ‘pacified’ favela in Brazil. The findings indicate some residents’ satisfaction with the police pacification unit (UPP) during its first years, when weapons were taken off the street. However, since 2017, shootouts have occurred daily, and favela residents now state that they feel like hostages between the police and traffickers and believe that the UPP never worked. I argue that the pacification programme operates drawing on ‘coloniality of power’, while unfolding new forms of militarisation/pacification as a changing-same, increasingly ‘borderising bodies’, as Mbembe writes. Simultaneously, as bodies are increasingly being borderised by the work of death, the struggles to decolonise territories also unfolds beyond the physical borders. The increased legitimisation of militarisation towards the urban poor draws on a ‘racial axis’, wherein certain bodies are seen as threats becoming contested ‘borders’.
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Instagram is a virtual, multi-authored platform that symbolizes geographic realities by allowing its users to capture time-and-space-specific characteristics through photographs or videos. As opposed to the selective reproduction of dominant discourses, Instagram users collaboratively produce multiple truths based on their own personal perceptions and experiences. Considering that favelas in Brazil are some of the most stigmatized, misrepresented and misunderstood places in the world, this article follows the term ‘favela’ (#favela) to better understand how it is being used by the masses in 2019. Ultimately, this article analyses the space and identity of ‘favelas’ in urban Brazil by dividing our findings into three separate categories: (1) ‘hashtag favela as advertising’, (2) ‘hashtag favela as tourism’ and (3) ‘hashtag favela as everyday’. We found that although Instagram promotes the ability of favela residents to represent themselves, #favela continues to be co-opted by outsiders. Interestingly, when the term is co-opted by outsiders, its meaning is transformed from a physical space or neighbourhood into one of the many types of commodities to be bought and sold.
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No contexto dos conflitos decorrentes da implantação das Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora nas favelas cariocas, o jornal O Globo representou através de mapas a favela em seu noticiário sobre o tema. Partindo do princípio de que os mapas são imagens que se apresentam enquanto ‘verdades’ sobre o espaço e que o jornal é um veículo de comunicação que fabrica ‘verdades’, o presente trabalho tem como objetivo demonstrar que esses mapas jornalísticos apresentaram uma forma de representação que pode ser reconhecida como favelismo. Em referência ao orientalismo de Edward Said, o favelismo foi o termo cunhado por Márcia Pereira Leite para denominar as representações hegemônicas que inferiorizaram um determinado Outro – os indivíduos associados à favela e o seu espaço. Analisaremos o favelismo enquanto uma matriz de discursos inferiorizantes que se manifestaram nesses mapas jornalísticos, que produziram e reproduziram uma determinada imaginação geográfica sobre as áreas favelizadas.
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Com vistas a esboçar uma agenda preliminar de pesquisa, primeiramente será feito um cotejamento das “geopolíticas do conhecimento”, conforme às conceituações decoloniais, com duas abordagens geográficas interessadas em imagens: o debate produzido por intelectuais da geopolítica crítica a respeito das “geopolíticas populares” e a discussão a respeito das “geografias pop”. Depois, serão apresentadas algumas das abordagens decoloniais que, mais recentemente, têm dado ênfase à análise de imagens. Frente à exposição deste leque de contribuições, finalmente serão delineadas geografias nas imagens e geografias das imagens dispostas a desencobrir o eurocentrismo e a colonialidade do poder que desenham e movimentam representações geo-historicamente reproduzidas a respeito do Outro e seus espaços.
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This article examines the mobilisation of spatial media technologies for digitally mapping informal settlements. It argues that digital mapping operates politically through a re-configuration of circulation, power, and territorial formations. Drawing on Stuart Elden’s understanding of territory, where space is ‘rendered’ as a political category, the coming together of digital mapping and the geoweb is uncovered as a political technique re-making territory through computational logics – operating as a calculative practice that, beyond simply representing space, is productive of the political spatiality that characterises territory. The article is based on an analysis of recent attempts by ICT corporates, particularly Google, to map favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, critically examining the claim that digitally mapping informal settlements is a mechanism for socio-economic inclusion. Providing a counterargument to claims around the power of digital maps to incorporate favelas, provide recognition, legitimacy, visibility and citizenship, we discuss how in the interface between digital and urban worlds, territory as a political space is constructed through economic incorporation. In doing so, the article unpacks the spatial politics of digital and smart urbanisms and the emerging sovereignties of digital territories, particularly in the context of the tension between inclusion and exclusion experienced by those who live in informal settlements in cities in the global South.
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In this chapter, Markus-Michael Müller examines the (post)colonial and international dimensions of police abuse in democratic Brazil. He argues that Rio de Janeiro’s “successful” experience with Pacification Police Units (UPPs) is best assessed with pacification, rather than policing, at the center of the analysis. The chapter reveals that the UPPs are the direct result of the reimport of urban counterinsurgency practices from Colombia and Haiti (in the latter, Brazil is in charge of the military component of the UN peacekeeping mission MINUSTAH). Müller shows how this reimport of counterinsurgency practices to Brazil is embedded within a larger (post)colonial institutional legacy of police repression in the name of pacifying the racialized and marginalized “urban other” to support a particular political economy.
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The free accessibility to satellite images and GIS plus the students’ ability in handling multimedia on their own smartphones enable the use of geo-technologies and multimedia resources in teaching cartography. This research, has considered the input, limits and possibilities of employing space technology, geo-processing and multimedia resources in Geography classes for 7th-grade students in the public schools of São Gonçalo in Rio de Janeiro; a digital material has also been developed through the web, named “Mapeando Meu Rio (MMR)” or “Mapping My River (MMR)”, which addresses the issue of the socio- environmental perception of the Alcântara river. The interest and involvement from the students throughout the different activities proposed on the aforementioned methodology has been remarkable especially in the use of multimedia resources and geo-technologies as support material for the Environmental Education. Based on the MMR evaluation, 7th grade students have fallen short in their cartographic literacy at the end of their school year; this failure has been noticed both in their ability to make mental maps and in the handling of GPS, Google Earth and ArcGIS Online. When requested to produce a spatial layout on their own, students were not able to put into practice their basic knowledge of cartography, especially in the use of legends, geographical coordinates, and spatial orientation. The cartographic literacy should not be restrained to the syllabus of 7th grade classes; instead, it should be considered as a means of communication to the understanding of the spatial dynamics during the whole course of elementary and high school. All geography-based activities are meant to give students a better understanding of their geographical space, in such a way that they may be able to build meaningful abstractions from their own reality, that is, from their own living place.
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Two themes dominate this year’s report: calculation and territory. Both of these are larger issues than cartography itself, but cartography has been increasingly drawn into their ambit such that we might tentatively identify cartographic calculations of territory. Ranging across a wide set of problems including colonial, political and racial mappings, not to mention indigeneity and philosophical concerns of ontology, calculation and territory mark out a wide swath of cartographically informed work.
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This paper traces the development and diversification of the squatter housing form — favela — and the music form — samba — in Rio de Janeiro from the late 19th century to the present. It is posited that in reflecting (working class) endogenous attitudes and (middle class) exogenous social mores, these two forms have shared a parallel if not precisely time-phased evolution. Evidence is presented to show that poverty, black identity and spatial exclusion from wider society were essential contributors to the origins of the favelas in the late 19th century and the samba in the early 20th century. During the 1940s and 50s when public attitudes to the favelas and their inhabitants were strongly negative, with many favelas being eradicated under public housing policy, protest themes and songs against poverty and marginalisation in samba were suppressed by the Rio authorities. In more recent times, with official attitudes towards the favelas improving and the favelas diversifying in socio-economic and cultural terms, the samba has begun to incorporate other music forms and to widen its cultural basis. Just as attempts are now being made by the city hall to integrate the favelas with the formal city, the samba, assisted by Carnival, has become accepted as a form of mass culture, enjoyed not only by the city of Rio but also by Brazil and the world at large. The close, if not parallel, development of the Rio favelas and samba, encourages a consideration that samba can be seen as a metaphor for the favelas themselves.
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Cities, at their best, are cradles of diversity, opportunity, and citizenship. Why, then, do so many cities today seem scarred by divisions separating the powerful and privileged from the victims of deprivation and injustice? What is it like to live on the wrong side of the divide in Paris, London, New York, Sao Paolo, and other cities all over the world? In this book, based on the internationally renowned Oxford Amnesty Lectures, eight leading urban thinkers argue about why divisions arise in cities and about what could and should be done to bring those divisions to an end. The book features essays by Patrick Declerck, Stuart Hall, David Harvey, Richard Rogers, Patricia Williams, and James Wolfensohn, with commentaries from Peter Hall, Michael Likosky, and others. The many contemporary issues that the book addresses include the impact of globalization and migration on the urban environment, the consequences of the 'war on terror' for those living in cities, the new development paradigm being adopted by international institutions in the developing world, the need for a genuine urban renaissance in Britain and elsewhere, and the suffering of the homeless. These controversial and sometimes conflicting essays, linked by Richard Scholar's incisive introduction, aim to encourage and inform debate about the challenges to human rights in our increasingly urban world.
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List of Maps, Illustrations, and Tables Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Anthropology with an Accent PART ONE: The Talk of Crime 1. Talking of Crime and Ordering the World Crime as a Disorganizing Experience and an Organizing Symbol Violence and Signification From Progress to Economic Crisis, from Authoritarianism to Democracy 2. Crisis, Criminals, and the Spread of Evil Limits to Modernization Going Down Socially and Despising the Poor The Experiences of Violence Dilemmas of Classification and Discrimination Evil and Authority PART TWO: Violent Crime and the Failure of the Rule of Law 3. The Increase in Violent Crime Tailoring the Statistics Crime Trends, 1973-1996 Looking for Explanations 4. The Police: A Long History of Abuses A Critique of the Incomplete Modernity Model Organization of the Police Forces A Tradition of Transgressions 5. Police Violence under Democracy Escalating Police Violence Promoting a "Tough" Police The Massacre at the Casa de Detencao The Police from the Citizens' Point of View Security as a Private Matter The Cycle of Violence PART THREE: Urban Segregation, Fortified Enclaves, and Public Space 6. Sao Paulo: Three Patterns of Spatial Segregation The Concentrated City of Early Industrialization Center-Periphery: The Dispersed City Proximity and Walls in the 198s and 199s 7. Fortified Enclaves: Building Up Walls and Creating a New Private Order Private Worlds for the Elite From Corticos to Luxury Enclaves A Total Way of Life: Advertising Residential Enclaves for the Rich Keeping Order inside the Walls Resisting the Enclaves An Aesthetic of Security 8. The Implosion of Modern Public Life The Modern Ideal of Public Space and City Life Garden City and Modernism: The Lineage of the Fortified Enclave Street Life: Incivility and Aggression Experiencing the Public The Neo-international Style: Sao Paulo and Los Angeles Contradictory Public Space PART FOUR: Violence, Civil Rights, and the Body 9. Violence, the Unbounded Body, and the Disregard for Rights in Brazilian Democracy Human Rights as "Privileges for Bandits" Debating Capital Punishment Punishment as Private and Painful Vengeance Body and Rights Appendix Notes References Index
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This paper discusses how the theoretical frameworks proposed by Blakemore and Harley (1980) for the history of cartography can be applied to study of journalistic maps representing South American borders in the Brazilian press. Among the different concepts used by geographers and cartographers to study the influence of cultural meanings on maps, two theoretical frameworks are particularly emphasized: iconography and semiotics. In the light of these contributions, this paper discusses approaches to explore Brazilian journalistic maps concerning South American borders during the 1970s and 1990s. The role of media maps in the construction of geopolitical imaginations in the continent is still being developed. In this “un-chartered territory”, the discussion of Brazilian journalistic maps suggests a persistent representation of borders as threatening and dangerous places.
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Maps are an important element of the 'media's' representation of a range of important geopolitical and environmental issues. To date, few comprehensive surveys of news media map use and design have been undertaken. This paper provides an overview of the empirical results of a seven month survey (January to July 1999) of five UK prestige daily newspapers ('broadsheets'), The Daily Telegraph, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Times, and compares these findings with earlier studies. The paper suggests several key questions for news media map research and sets the scene for further detailed analysis of the data set provided by the survey.
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Does planning in contested cities inadvertedly make the divisions worse? The 60s and 70s saw a strong role of planning, social engineering, etc but there has since been a move towards a more decentralised 'community planning' approach. The book examines urban planning and policy in the context of deeply contested space, where place identity and cultural affinities are reshaping cities. Throughout the world, contentions around identity and territory abound, and in Britain, this problem has found recent expression in debates about multiculturalism and social cohesion. These issues are most visible in the urban arena, where socially polarised communities co-habit cities also marked by divided ethnic loyalties. The relationship between the two is complicated by the typical pattern that social disadvantage is disproportionately concentrated among ethnic groups, who also experience a social and cultural estrangement, based on religious or racial identity. Navigating between social exclusion and community cohesion is essential for the urban challenges of efficient resource use, environmental enhancement, and the development of a flourishing economy. The book addresses planning in divided cities in a UK and international context, examining cities such as Chicago, hyper-segregated around race, and Jerusalem, acting as a crucible for a wider conflict. The first section deals with concepts and theories, examining the research literature and situating the issue within the urban challenges of competitiveness and inclusion. Section 2 covers collaborative planning and identifies models of planning, policy and urban governance that can operate in contested space. Section 3 presents case studies from Belfast, Chicago and Jerusalem, examining both the historical/contemporary features of these cities and their potential trajectories. The final section offers conclusions and ways forward, drawing the lessons for creating shared space in a pluralist cities and addressing cohesion and multiculturalism. Addresses important contemporary issue of social cohesion vs. urban competitiveness focus on impact of government policies will appeal to practitioners in urban management, local government and regeneration Examines role of planning in cities worldwide divided by religion, race, socio-economic, etc Explores debate about contested space in urban policy and planning Identifies models for understanding contested spaces in cities as a way of improving effectiveness of government policy.
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The observation that redemocratization in Latin America is a fragile process has become a commonplace in the social science literature of the past few years. The social movements crucial to the return of procedural democracy have, we are told, lost their momentum to the very forces they helped to restore. Electoral democracy has returned in many places with neoclientelistic overtones that are eroding the gains in consciousness achieved in the nonelectoral years (Hagopian 1993). The absence of a common enemy, most often an authoritarian military regime, has tended to mask less visible but often equally pernicious enemies in the form of violence that is nonofficial but tolerated nonetheless (Pinheiro 1992). And although procedural democratic practices may have returned for the middle classes, nothing inherent in the transition to democracy guarantees either procedural or substantive democracy for the lower classes (Huggins, ed., 1991; O'Donnell 1992; Fox 1994a).
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The paper raises questions about the widespread claim that GIS fosters democratic practice, broadens the distribution of and access to information, and reduces the burden of work on those who adopt its rigors and accept its benefits. The detailed implications for democratic practice and contemporary geographical theory will be the explicit focus of a second paper. -from Author
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Every map is at once a synthesis of signs and a sign in itself: an instrument of depiction - of objects, events, places - and an instrument of persuasion - about these, its makers and itself. Like any other sign, it is the product of codes: conventions that prescribe relations of content and expression in a given semiotic circumstance. The codes that underwrite the map are as numerous as its motives, and as thoroughly naturalized within the culture that generates and exploits them. Map signs, and maps as signs, depend fundamentally on conventions, signify only in relation to other signs, and are never free of their cultural context or the motives of their makers.-from Authors
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Intrasexual competition is seen in many species and involves competition for access to members of the opposite sex. The article examines different elements of intrasexual competition. It begins by examining the evolutionary dynamics of intrasexual competition. It goes onto discuss how and why it is expressed differently for males and females. Behavioral displays, sperm competition and copulatory plugs are also examined as anatomical, physiological, and psychological examples of intrasexual competition.
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The last two decades have seen a marked rise in the number of maps in the popular media, yet academic interest in journalistic cartography remains low, though the bulk of the public relies on the media for its geographic knowledge. Because they invoke a sense of belonging, identity, and allegiance, the number of media maps, like flags and other patriotic icons, increases during conflict. From the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan until the proclamation of victory in Iraq almost two years later, three major American news magazines published nearly 200 related maps. Early maps of Afghanistan affirmed U.S. military prowess and promised quick retribution, but with the failure of this promise, pointed to obstacles from terrain to climate. As interest in Afghanistan cooled and rhetoric over Iraq heated up, cartographic attention shifted accordingly. Initial maps of Iraq were provocative, focusing especially on the state's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction. Maps again depicted American military might, and as the invasion progressed seemingly unimpeded, Baghdad came into cartographic focus. In these compositions the melding of artwork, remotely sensed images, and photography lends even greater veracity to the maps themselves, which not only convey but also construct both political and geographic knowledge.
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Latin American city structure has changed dramatically during the 20th century as modernization and rapid growth became widespread. The morphology of Latin American cities cannot be explained by models developed for the Anglo-American urban experience. This model describes Latin American city structure and analyses the causal processes. It is characterized by a dominant elite residential sector and a commercial spine in combination with concentric zones of decreasing residential quality with distance from the city center. Bogota and Tijuana are the empirical examples for the model. -Authors
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This special section of Urban History explores the spatial histories of urban house numbering and the calculative rationalities of government since the Enlightenment. More than a mere footnote to the history of postal communications, the house number was first introduced as an inscriptive device to serve a wide range of governmental purposes, from military conscription and the quartering of soldiers to census-taking and the policing of urban populations. The spatial practice of house numbering can therefore be seen as a ‘political technology’ that was developed to reorganize urban space according to the dictates of numerical calculation. The articles in this special section examine the historical emergence of house numbering, and related practices, in different geographical circumstances, illustrating the spatial strategies of governmentality and the tactics of resistance that shaped the spatial organization of the modern city.
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In this plenary, I call for urban geographers to frame public health as a form of urban politics, theorized as governmentality and biopower. I interpret the politics of venereal disease (VD) in Seattle during the mid-20th century this way, detecting a series of dualities in key dimensions of the governance of VD, thus extending geographers' work on these concepts. There was an epistemic duality between biomedical and social framings of disease, a simultaneous techne between ascending and descending modes of power; a duality between descriptive and predictive visibilities; an identity paradox around which bodies were at risk; and a duality in ethos between conservative and progressive principles. Interpreting the city politics of public health this way foregrounds this local-state function as an important topic for urban political geography and brings a series of literatures together into conversation that have tended to remain distinct.
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This paper seeks to explore a different way of examining the ‘difference’ of European and colonial governments, showing how the Indian colonial state privileged investments in political, rather than civil, society. The former targeted the population and sought effects through policies that could be co-ordinated from a distance, at low cost. The latter targeted the social realm and necessarily involved the admission of the rights and privileges of liberal citizenship. Calculations in political society displayed: certain ways of visualizing a population, epistemological assumptions about what could be known, identity assumptions about how subjects should be conceived and an ethos that protected the state from heavy expense. This is illustrated practically through exploring the debate over congestion in colonial Delhi. Three texts that addressed the congestion debate are analysed in depth: an official government report; a publication by a member of the Delhi Improvement Trust; and a memorandum submitted to the government. These texts demonstrate a span of opinions regarding the methods by which congestion could be solved and the calculations about local subjects these solutions would presume. La gouvernementalité, la congestion et le calcul à Delhi au temps de la colonisation L'objectif du présent article est d'explorer une façon inédite de traiter de la «différence» entre les gouvernements européens et coloniaux, montrant ainsi comment l'état colonial hindou investissait davantage dans la société politique que la société civile. La première avait pour cible la population et des politiques susceptibles de produire des effets que l'on pouvait élaborer à distance et à faible coût. La seconde avait pour cible le domaine social et impliquait forcément l'acceptation de droits et privilèges de la citoyenneté libérale. La société politique privilégiait les activités telles que les manières particulières de visualiser une population, les hypothèses épistémologiques sur ce qui pouvait être appréhendé, les hypothèses sur l'identité et comment les sujets devaient être envisagés, et l'ethos qui protégeait l'état contre le fardeau des dépenses exorbitantes. Ceci est illustré concrètement par une analyse des discussions portant sur les problèmes de congestion à Delhi au temps de la colonisation. Trois textes qui se sont intéressés à ces discussions sur la congestion font l'objet d'un examen détaillé: un rapport officiel du gouvernement; un document d'un membre du Delhi Improvement Trust; et un mémorandum soumis au gouvernement. Ces textes mettent en évidence la gamme étendue d'opinions sur les méthodes qui s'offraient pour résoudre les problèmes de congestion et sur les calculs relatifs aux sujets locaux que ces solutions laissaient sous-entendre. Foucault, governementalité, colonialisme, Delhi, biopolitiques, calcul. Gubernamentalidad, congestión y cálculo en el Delhi colonial Este papel trata de explorar un modo distinto de examinar la ‘diferencia’ entre gobiernos europeos y coloniales, mostrando como el Estado colonial de la India privilegiaba inversiones en la sociedad política en vez de la civil. La primera se dirigía a la población y trataba de lograr efectos mediante políticas que se podría coordinar a distancia con pocos gastos. La segunda se dirigía al terreno social y necesariamente reconocía los derechos y privilegios de la ciudadanía liberal. Actividades en la sociedad política privilegiaban ciertas maneras de visualizar una población, suposiciones epistemológicas sobre lo que era posible saber, suposiciones sobre identidad y cómo deberían ser concebidos los sujetos y valores y actitudes que protegían el estado de gastos fuertes. Esto es ilustrado por medio de una exploración del debate sobre congestión en el Delhi colonial. Analizo de modo exhaustivo tres textos que se dirigen al debate sobre congestión: un informe oficial de gobierno, una publicación escrita por un miembro de la ‘Delhi Improvement Trust’ (Fundación para el Mejoramiento de Delhi) y un memorando presentado al gobierno. Estos textos demuestran la extensión de opiniones sobre modos de resolver el problema de la congestión y los cálculos sobre sujetos locales que estas soluciones suponían. Foucault, gubernamentalidad, colonialismo, Delhi, biopolítica, cálculo.
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"Cartography, Ethics and Social Theory' is a sequel to "Deconstructing the Map' (Cartographica 26/2, 1989: 1-20) and to the "Responses' to that paper (see "Commentary' Cartographica 26/3 & 4, 1989: 89-121). It is argued that the absence of a social dimension in cartographic theory has led to a neglect of social issues in the content of maps and that together these deficiencies constitute a crisis of representation. The dilemma of cartographic ethics - and the profession's response to it - is discussed in the context of the technological transformation in official topographical mapping being induced by the invention of Geographical Information Systems. A case is made for the retention of topographical maps in their present published form on the grounds that they can offer a democratic and humanistic form of geographical knowledge. -Author
Article
Every map is at once a synthesis of signs and a sign in itself: an instrument of depiction-of objects, events, places-and an instrument of persuasion-about these, itsmakers and itself. Like any other sign, it is the product of codes: conventions that prescribe relations of content and expression in a given semiotic circumstance. The codes that underwrite the map are as numerous as its motives, and as thoroughly naturalized within the culture that generates and exploits them. Intrasignificant codes govern the formation of the cartographic icon, the deployment of visible language, and the scheme of their joint presentation. These operate across several levels of integration, activating a repertoire of representational conventions and syntactical procedures extending from the symbolic principles of individual marks to elaborate frameworks of cartographic discourse. Extrasignificant codes govern the appropriation of entire maps as sign vehicles for social and political expression-of values, goals, aesthetics and status-as the means of modern myth. Map signs, and maps as signs, depend fundamentally on conventions, signify only in relation to other signs, and are never free of their cultural context or the motives of their makers.
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de Almeida Abreu Mauricio, Le Clerre Gerard. Reconstruire une histoire oubliee. Origine et expansion initiale des favelas de Rio de Janeiro. In: Geneses, 16, 1994. Territoires urbains contestes, sous la direction de Michel Offerle. pp. 45-68.
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Maps are an increasingly important element of the news media's coverage of geopolitics and war. To date few comprehensive surveys of journalistic cartography have been undertaken, yet computer graphics and new spatial database technologies are allowing publishers to exploit geographic information more fully and to produce timely and vivid representations of war zones and related matters. This paper draws on the results of a longitudinal survey (1999-2001) of the five UK prestige daily newspapers ("broadsheets") to explore the role of map graphics in geopolitical and security discourse. The paper focuses on two case studies in which paradigm shifts in warfare are intimately bound up with the nature of geopolitics and threat in the post-Cold-War period. The study reveals the instability inherent in cartographic representations despite popular conceptions of maps as objective, mimetic images.
Article
Given that the influence of the state apparatus tends to vary across space, it has been frequently presumed that the state develops a stronger presence in wealthier neighborhoods (where levels of capital accumulation are higher) than it does in poorer ones. In Brazilian favelas (urban slums), as a prominent example, ethnographic accounts have previously suggested that the presence of the 'official' state is limited and on the decline. Based on the results of intensive fieldwork in Fortaleza, Brazil, this paper complicates that argument, positing that the state, through the effects of governmentality, may actually have a much stronger presence in favelas than has often been presumed. Drawing upon case research with favela residents, and interpreting through a Foucaultian perspective, this paper explains the increasing presence of the state through the governmentality produced in urban space. By recognizing how the state manifests both in and through bodies and space, researchers are provided better traction for understanding proliferating urban slums and explaining the political landscapes they engender.
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‘On a visit to Leningrad some years ago I consulted a map to find out where I was, but I could not make it out. From where I stood, I could see several enormous churches, yet there was no trace of them on my map. When finally an interpreter came to help me, he said: “We don't show churches on our maps.” Contradicting him, I pointed to one that was very clearly marked. “That is a museum,” he said, “not what we call a ‘living church.’ It is only ‘living churches’ we don't show.”It then occurred to me that this was not the first time I had been given a map which failed to show many things I could see right in front of my eyes. All through school and university I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance to the conduct of my life. I remembered that for many years my perplexity had been complete; and no interpreter had come along to help me. It remained complete until I ceased to suspect the sanity of my perceptions and began, instead, to suspect the soundness of the maps.’E. F. Schumacher, ‘On philosophical maps,’ A guide for the perplexed (New York, 1977).
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Writing on popular geographies has emphasized the shaping role of media. Newspapers and magazines, school texts, and atlases, had particular impacts on the twentieth century American geographical imagination, notably during World War II when news cartography became entwined with geopolitical mapping. The wartime mapmaker Richard Edes Harrison has been cited as exemplary of the role graphics played in promoting and popularizing an “air-age” geographical imagination. But Harrison was only one of a number of innovative mapmakers whose work reflects broader graphic traditions in mid-twentieth-century America. The Los Angeles Times artist Charles Owens, whose dramatic color maps of the World War were published weekly between 1942–1945, offers a West Coast perspective on the emerging spatiality of the air age in the context of wartime geopolitical mapping. Images that were powerfully influenced by Southern California's modern cultural landscape—specifically by air photography, automobiles, and the movies—provide insight into a more general association of mass media, popular culture, graphics, and geopolitical “imagination” in mid-twentieth-century America.
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While Michel Foucault's writings have been used in different branches of geography, his later writings on governmentality and especially biopolitics have not yet received due consideration within population geography. This paper attempts to divert attention to Foucault's writings on population, from his initial medical work to his later governmentality lectures on the regulation of national populations. From his various writings the different scales of biopolitics (subjective, territorial, geopolitical, state, international) and the different analytical levels (episteme, identity, visibility, techne, and ethos) appropriate to them are suggested as being of use to population geographers. Practical examples are given from research on colonial India due to its diversity and the foregrounding of political relations that can be observed there. A review of the debate on how to (re)theorise population geography is used to suggest that Foucault's writings can help population geographers to consider the objects, methods and outputs of their research in a critical and politically active way. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Many large Black settlements are downgraded or made invisible on maps of South Africa. This form of subjective generalisation gives a false prominence to small White towns. A more realistic map of the major settlements in South Africa is presented. The problems associated with mapping of Black settlements are discussed. These include the lack of census data, absence of official recognition of places, difficulties of place naming and the lack of functional imcomparability with other places.
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Cartography has usually been perceived as an objective and exact science. Maps have been seen as actual presentations of the world or the area they depict. But another angle is also possible: they may be interpreted as social or political statements and tools for policy making. Therefore, it is important to aim at interpreting maps as products of their own time, in their own social and historical context. Iconology and hermeneutic interpretation may prove to be useful tools, especially when historical press maps are concerned. I will explore the ways in which maps were used in the Finnish newspapers, magazines and humorous magazines, with examples from the early 1900's to 1941. In many cases, the map was an essential part of the article or caricature, along with the text and other figures. They were often aimed to affect people's opinions and images, and to support Finland's territorial hopes in the Eastern Karelia. Among the other national symbols, such as the flag, national anthem or coat of arms, the map of Finland can be considered as a symbol of nationhood.