Читать книгу The Politics of Mapping - Bernard Debarbieux - Страница 16

The second half of the 20th century saw a major change in this field: the diversification of actors gaining access to the production of maps, which had, since at least the 19th century, been monopolized by state and military institutions. The launch of the first satellites (see Sputnik 1, sent into space by the Soviets in 1957) marked the first challenge to the cartographic sovereignty of states: indeed, outer space is marked by a legal vacuum (it refers to space beyond airspace, the latter being included in the sovereignty of states). Although the producers of satellite images were initially guided by military uses, from the 1970s onwards, remote sensing expanded its civil uses (Landsat, Spot images, etc.). However, data production has remained permanently dominated by the United States and a few other hegemonic actors (Desbois 2015). Hy Dao (see Chapter 7) shows that international governance arising after the Second World War (United Nations (UN) agencies in particular) has also adopted the production of a certain type of data, supposedly to help solve major global issues, including environmental problems.

The second challenge to the state’s quasi-monopoly in cartographic and geographic information production occurred at the turn of the 21st century, with the digital revolution and the widespread use of the Internet and geospatial technologies. Global players such as Google benefited from the transfer of digital geographic information technologies from the military to the civilian domain (Cloud 2002; Desbois 2015). Not only have they challenged the monopoly of states in the production and dissemination of geographic information, especially on the Internet, but they have also entered the daily lives of individuals. These private companies now possess significant means of cartographic production – or, more generally, of georeferenced information – and contribute massively to the “deluge” of data and images (the famous big data).

The third crack in the edifice of state cartographic sovereignty has come “from below”. As Jeremy Crampton and John Krygier point out: “In the last few years cartography has been slipping from the control of the powerful elites that have exercised dominance over it for several hundred years” (Crampton and Krygier 2006, p. 12). Grassroots social movements or civil society actors with “local” anchors (“inhabitants”, “citizens”, members of cultural “minorities” or “Indigenous peoples”, etc.) have been increasingly producing their own maps (Debarbieux and Lardon 2003). The local framing of their actions has not prevented them from defending causes that are sometimes transnational or even global (as in the case of the fight against climate change). This shift may have taken place both because of easier and cheaper access to certain mapping or geospatial techniques and because of their growing involvement in development or territorial planning projects. These actors have seen cartographic language as a means of defending the quality of their space and living environment, of claiming rights, of promoting political causes or seeking sociospatial justice; or, in a less radical spirit, as a means of dialogue with the authorities in order to make their visions and perceptions of space known. These processes are part of both resistance and openness attitudes, as Greg Brown and Hunter Glanz show when describing participatory GIS practices in the context of territorial planning projects in the state of California: the mapping of their spatial preferences by inhabitants highlights both negative attitudes of rejection (nimby or Not-In-My-Back-Yard) and positive attitudes of support for these projects (yimby or Yes-In-My-Back-Yard), depending on the distance between their home and the project (Brown and Glanz 2018). Another characteristic of these actors “from below” is that they have massively taken on new digital technologies and the geoweb, both software and programs produced and controlled by the GAFAs, as well as free software. However, the political effects of this investment have not always been what one might expect. For example, the OpenStreetMap (OSM) free maps, produced by thousands of volunteers, have now become a reference for political authorities, especially municipalities in France, whose data from official maps are generally not as up-to-date as those from the OSM.