I just saw in the syllabus that we needed to link our comments made on others’ blogs within our own blog. So here are links to my posts retroactively:
Comment: So, first of all, I love the clip and the late-90′s use of a kimono as fashion forward. Overall I enjoyed this weeks readings and took away the same main talking points which you did, so that is encouraging. But I took issue with the idea that when map making became professionalized into cartography that it led to the downfall of the field. I believe this point was in Wood. It seemed a little overly theoretical while ignoring the real world fact that at some point there needs to be standardization so that you don’t need specialized knowledge to read every individual map. I really did not care for Wood.
Comment: I thought one of the interesting ideas brought up by this weeks readings was not only the “blank spaces” idea, but also the fact that the Native system of mapping was thought of as non-existent because it was done in a different style than European maps. This is what it seems led to the idea that Natives had “no system of land ownership… hmm…” In arguing that Natives did use maps by and for themselves, I believe it was Harley who points out that not only did the indigenous ppls use maps to show terriroty, but they were also used to show more theoretical ideas like fate, dreams, etc. It was a similar idea which made the Aztec map in the Mundy reading circular, reflecting the Aztec theories on the cosmos and an Aztec-centric world view. This map did not reflect geographical reality in all circumstances, but it most certainly showed an understanding of ownership.
Comment: I think that native maps were certainly different in character than European maps with regards to ownership, but I think that they absolutely reflected power relationships and hierarchies within the Native world. In defense of this idea I am thinking of Juliana Barr’s arguments about Native American cultures and hierarchies in “Peace Came in the Form of a Woman.” Though this book is primarily about gender relationships, it is also about the shifting power roles between native tribes, within native tribes, and between tribes and Europeans. Natives certainly fought for power/ control over lands in a similar way that Europeans did and so I’m confident that Native maps reflected authority.
Comment: Something that struck me this week in reading the Mundy and Lewis articles was the extent to which other historians really do just use maps as illustrations. I just finished reading “Masters of Small Worlds” by Stephanie McCurry for another class. This book is about the spatial arrangements of yeomen farmers in relation to their planter neighbors in low country South Carolina during the Antebellum period and how they created a society wherein the house was the center of a male-master society. The details of the McCurry work is less important than the fact that her argument is an entirely spatial one and there are no maps in her book. She could have (and should have) used maps to not only help to illustrate her points, but also to articulate the spatial arrangements of power. A map would have been more convincing than text in many cases. This just proves the point argued by the authors we’ve been reading for this class that historians are ignoring maps as a research tool and source.
Comment: Well I don’t know about “wrong” but certainly mapping during the Civil War would have taken on new kinds of power and meaning for strategic circumstances, but also because Lincoln didn’t really ever recognize the southern states’ right to leave the Union… so in mapping territory insisting that the Southern states were still part of the US would have had deep political meanings.
Comment: Liz Lemon on Avatar: “They weren’t Marines. Some of them were former Marines. But they were mercenaries working for a space mining company. What? Should we just sit here and be wrong all day!”
Okay now that THAT is out of my system… with regards to the European “linguistic manipulation of maps” something else that I thought was particularly interesting about naming practices was not only that Europeans would change place names to show domination of native tribes, but also the different ways that natives and Europeans would go about choosing a place name.
According to Harley, most natives would use the place name to describe the area (makes sense) where as Europeans would use the names to recreate social hierarchies into the landscape. For example, Virginia is named after “the virgin Queen” (sidenote: the jig is up!) Elizabeth I. This is obviously done to pay homage, but also think about the fact that Elizabeth is the highest of the totem poll of English hierarchy, therefore the entire colony is named after her. Where as the county of Fairfax, a small geographical region, is named after Lord Fairfax, someone lower down on the pay scale.
It also made me think of the fact that European explorers named Iceland, Iceland to make it seem barren and frigid even though it is quite green to discourage settlement. Whereas Greenland, which is covered in ice, was named that to trick immigrants into traveling there. And yes, I learned that from D2: The Mighty Ducks. GO TEAM ICELAND!
Digital Public History 