Mapping and territory: What critical cartography offers to an analysis of land governance?
Fernando Galeana
The field of critical cartography attends to the ways in which cartographic practices “produce” territory through mapping. Critical cartography problematizes the assumptions of objectivity often presupposed in “technical” activities such as land surveying or identifying customary land tenure. Although this constructivists lens has significant implications for land governance analysis, the insights of critical cartography are usually not transferred into policy discussions. Building on the case of the Miskitu people in the region of Moskitia in eastern Honduras, this paper examines how cartographic practices have contributed to the making of indigenous territories. This paper argues that participatory mapping projects significantly influenced the formation of the indigenous territories, known as territorial councils in Honduras, transforming how stakeholders think about boundaries and the management of natural resources. This paper proposes that integrating the lens of critical cartography into an analysis of land governance can contribute to a better identification of the dynamics that emerge as effects of mapping and finding the most appropriate solutions.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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