How can we map differing perceptions of the living environment? Mapping the Unmappable? explores the potential of cartography to communicate the relations of Africa’s indigenous peoples with other human and non-human actors within their environments. These relations transcend Western dichotomies such as culture-nature, human-animal, natural-supernatural. The volume brings two strands of research – cartography and »relational« anthropology – into a closer dialogue. It provides case studies in Africa as well as lessons to be learned from other continents (e.g. North America, Asia and Australia). The contributors create a deepened understanding of indigenous ontologies for a further decolonization of maps, and thus advance current debates in the social sciences.
Contents
Acknowledgements …………………………………………………… 7
Introduction: Cartographic explorations with indigenous peoples in Africa
Ute Dieckmann……………………………………………………………. 9
Where is the map?
Øyvind Eide ……………………………………………………………… 47
What were we mapping? From the Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project to the Southern Kalahari
Hugh Brody ……………………………………………………………… 69
Hai||om in Etosha: Cultural maps and being-in-relations
Ute Dieckmann…………………………………………………………… 93
Densities of meaning in west Namibian landscapes: genealogies,
ancestral agencies, and healing Sian Sullivan and Welhemina
Suro Ganuses …………………………………. 139
Mapping multiple in Maasailand: Ontological openings for
knowing and managing nature otherwise
Mara Jill Goldman ……………………………………………………….. 193
Mapping materiality – social relations with objects and landscapes
Thea Skaanes…………………………………………………………… 223
Canvases as legal maps in native title claims
Saskia Vermeylen ……………………………………………………….. 261
Mapping meaning with comics – Enhancing Maps with visual art
and narrative
Frederik von Reumont ……………………………………………………. 291
What shall we map next? Expressing Indigenous geographies
with cartographic language
Margaret Wickens Pearce ………………………………………………….317