John Pickles is Earl N. Phillips Distinguished Professor of International Studies and Professor of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.A History of Spaces provides an essential insight into the practices and ideas of maps and map-making. It draws on a wide range of social theorists, and theorists of maps and cartography, to show how maps and map-making have shaped the spaces in which we live. The book begins by asking a seemingly very simple question: what does it mean to draw a line? It answers this question with the seemingly simple answer: to create a boundary, to define a space, and to shape an identity. The book builds on this foundation by exploring how historically maps have reached deep into social imaginaries to code the modern world. Going beyond the focus of traditional cartography the book draws on examples of the use of maps from the sixteenth century to the present, including their role in projects of the national and colonial state, emergent capitalism and the planetary consciousness of the natural sciences. It also considers the use of maps for military purposes, maps that have coded modern conceptions of health, disease and social character, and maps of the transparent human body and the transparent earth. The final chapters of the book turn to the rapid pace of change in mapping technologies, the forms of visualization and representation that are now possible, and what the author refers to as the possibilities for post-representational cartographies.This book provides an essential insight into the practices and ideas of maps and map-making. It draws on a wide range of social theorists, and theorists of maps and cartography, to show how maps and map-making have shaped the spaces in which we live. Going beyond the focus of traditional cartography, the book draws on examples of the use of maps from the sixteenth century to the present, including their role in projects of the national and colonial state, emergent capitalism and the planetary consciousness of the natural sciences. It also considers the use of maps for military purposes, maps that have coded modern conceptions of health, disease and social character, and maps of the transparent human body and the transparent earth.This work provides a useful insight into the practices and ideas of maps and map-making. It draws on a wide range of social theorists, and theorists of maps and cartography, to show how maps and map-making have shaped the spaces in which we live.This book provides an essential reading of the practices and ideas of mapping and mapmaking. It draws on a wide range of social theorists, and theorists of maps and cartography, to explore the many ways in which cartographic reason has coded our world.' A History of Spaces is such an important text. It is the first work to integrate maps with social theory in a balanced manner.... Pickles has developed a subtle, highly nuanced, and sophisticated analysis of spatial representation which will be crucial in rectifying geography's curious marginalization of the map'. - Matthew Edney, University of Southern Maine 'This is a wide-ranging and very thoughtful study in the field'. - Bob Rundstrom, University of OklahomaProvides an essential reading of the practices and ideas of mapping and mapmaking and explores the way cartographic reason has coded our world.
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