POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY, Vol. 11, No.

2, March

1992,127-129

Editorial comment
Politics in maps, maps in politics:
A tribute to Brian Harley

Cartography dtploys its vocabulary

so that it embodies a systematic social
inequality 7Ybedkxinctions of ckzs and power are engineered, reified and
legitimated in the map by means of cartogr~bic signs. %e rule seems to be Se
more powerful, the more prominent. To those who have strength in the world
shall be added the strength of the map.
BRIAN HARLEY(1989)

Despite the centrality of maps to the theory and practice of political geography, we have as
a subdiscipline been neglectful of our critical duties towards the products of cartography.
To be sure there are many exceptions to this assertion, most notably in our studies of
propaganda maps, but there has been no sustained effort to understand the meaning of
maps for the political processes we research. Fortunately, this task has been started for us
in recent studies of the history of cartography. The leading scholar in this field has been
Brian Harley who died unexpectedly in December 1991. This short comment is a political
geography tribute to a small part of Brians lifes work on understanding maps. I
concentrate on his very important recent work revealing the politics of cartography.
There is a battle going on in cartography and Brian Harleys work is at the centre of it.
This most scientific corner of our geographical studies has been accused of being innately
political-the
quotation above gives the flavour of Harleys argument. The particular
article from which this quotation is drawn immediately brought forth a torrent of comment
consisting of eleven responses in the next issue of Curtogrupbia. This level of concern is
due to the fundamental nature of Harleys challenge to established cartographic lore.
Harley begins his attack with the most basic question: What is a map?. Surely it is a
representation of reality, a mirror of our world as cartographers are apt to claim. Harley
(1989: 1) starts from the premise that cartography is seldom what cartographers say it is.
Instead a postmodern critique is offered where the map is either a text to be deconstructed
or a discourse in which knowledge as power is to be revealed. Some familiar and some
less familiar ideas are brought together to provide a new meaning for the maps we are apt
to use so unproblematically. For all their technological input, maps will always be social
creations and like all such phenomena they cannot escape the social relations that enable
their production. For instance, Harley identifies two rules of cartography that are never
mentioned in the textbooks of the discipline. The rule of ethnocentricity means that we
can identify the historical society in which a map is produced by simply looking at the
maps centre: for example, the Greenwich meridian as 0 longitude is a fine epitaph for
British hegemony. The rule of social orders produces a hierarchicalization
of space
reflecting the social order: for example, the popularity of the Peters projection, which
explicitly breaks this unwritten rule, produced among cartographers what Harley (1991: 5)
terms hysteria. But let us look at Harleys work in more detail: two arguments seem
particularly pertinent to political geography.
0962-6298/l

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1992 Butterworth-Heinemann

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Editorial

128

Nonplaces:

comment

the silence of maps

Harley argues that the nature of maps is revealed as much by what is omitted as by what
they contain. The cartographic silences that interest him are not those due to technical
limitations such as lack of data butpolitical silences (Harley, 1988a: 58). Such silences take
two forms, intentional
and unintentional.
Political geographers are familiar with the
former especially in terms of strategic secrecy. For instance, the most famous white space
on British Ordnance Survey maps is the 619-feet London landmark the Telecom tower!
Harley also discusses commercial secrecy as a cause of cartographic silence. But the key
contribution
Harley makes for political geography is in his discussion of unintentional
silences.
For Harley (1989: 6) maps as text provide as much a commentary on the social structure
of a particular nation or place as
on its topography. Most of Harleys examples are
drawn from early modern Europe but he provides contemporary salience with his silence
of the cartographers city (Harley, 1990: 5) where one looks in vain for the social crises of
the reality the map purports to represent. Throughout the cities of the world, maps omit
the shantytowns, bidonvilles, black townships, public-housing projects and council estates
as nonplaces revealing their irrelevance to the public eye. This point was brought home to
me forcefully recently during Britains 1991 urban riots. Suddenly Meadowell estate on
Tyneside was emblazoned across the headlines of the countrys media. But where exactly
is Meadowell? It would be no use turning to published maps, either Ordnance Survey or
commercial street maps, for Meadowell is a cartographic nonplace. This silence is just as
expressive of political power as are the intentional silences political geographers study on
propaganda maps.

Places into spaces: maps as authoritarian

images

Maps are implicated in the exercise of power as political geographers are well aware.
Hence, as well as the power exerted on cartography as described above, power is also
exercised with cartography. Mapping has been a function of the state in the modern world
and has had important roles in imperial expansion, military campaigns and much else
besides (Harley, 198813). But power with the help of maps is only part of the story. As well
as this external power there is power interval to cartography (Harley, 1989: 13). Maps
themselves have political effects; in their work, cartographers manufacture power. For
Harley power is embedded in the map and we should talk about the power of the map just
as we already talk about the power of the word (Harley, 1989: 13). In the process of
mapmaking the world is catalogued to normalize its variety, producing a disciplined space
in which sense of place is eradicated.
Political geographers are familiar with politics in maps but far less so with maps in
politics. Hence here is a second important area of research Harley opens up for us. By
turning places into uniform spaces the landscape is dehumanized. With all places deemed
to be the same, we can progress with scientific planning-be
it physical, social, economic
or military-in
a space that is a socially-empty commodity, a geometrical landscape of
cold, non-human facts (Harley, 1988a: 66). (This was written before the GulfWar provided
a horrifying example through the world medias illustration of how to desocialize places
on maps in preparation for battle.) In this argument the traditional cartographic claims of
objectivity and neutrality are masks that enhance the power of the map. It hides and denies
its social dimensions at the same time as it legitimates (Harley, 1989: 7). No wonder Harley
(1989: 14) is drawn to claim Maps are authoritarian
images-the
result of what he

Editorial comment

129

identifies as the essential paradox of modern cartography: As cartography became more

objective through the states patronage, so it was also imprisoned
by a different
subjectivity, that inherent in its replication of the states dominant ideology (Harley, 1988:
71).
Brian Harleys career was spent contributing to the history of cartography: he would
never have considered
himself a political geographer.
Nevertheless, I hope I have
illustrated here the salience of Brians work for our project. It is a sign of these times that
are so multidisciplinary
that we can pay tribute to a nonpolitical geographer who leaves
behind a political geography legacy for us to follow.
PETER
J. TAYLOR

References
HARLEY,
J B. (1988a). Silences and secrecy the hidden agenda of cartography
Mundi

in early modern

Europe. Imqgo

40, 57-76.

HAREY, J. B. (198%).

Maps, knowledge and power. In 7??eIconog?zzp@ of Landsc@e

eds) pp. 277-312.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
HARLR.J B. (1989). Deconstructing the map. Canographia
26, l-20.
HARLN,J. B. (1990). Cartography, ethics and social theory Cu~og?q&~la 27, l-23

(D. Cosgrove and P Daniels