Cartography: The Ideal and Its History

Author:   Matthew H Edney
Publisher:   The University of Chicago Press
ISBN:  

9780226605685


Pages:   296
Publication Date:   02 April 2019
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Cartography: The Ideal and Its History


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Overview

Over the past four decades, the volumes published in the landmark History of Cartography series have both chronicled and encouraged scholarship about maps and mapping practices across time and space. As the current director of the project that has produced these volumes, Matthew H. Edney has a unique vantage point for understanding what “cartography” has come to mean and include.   In this book Edney disavows the term cartography, rejecting the notion that maps represent an undifferentiated category of objects for study. Rather than treating maps as a single, unified group, he argues, scholars need to take a processual approach that examines specific types of maps—sea charts versus thematic maps, for example—in the context of the unique circumstances of their production, circulation, and consumption. To illuminate this bold argument, Edney chronicles precisely how the ideal of cartography that has developed in the West since 1800 has gone astray. By exposing the flaws in this ideal, his book challenges everyone who studies maps and mapping practices to reexamine their approach to the topic. The study of cartography will never be the same.

Full Product Details

Author:   Matthew H Edney
Publisher:   The University of Chicago Press
Imprint:   University of Chicago Press
ISBN:  

9780226605685


ISBN 10:   022660568
Pages:   296
Publication Date:   02 April 2019
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Reviews

Cartography concisely and clearly captures not just the main strands of Edney's own work over the last several decades, but also the major questions facing map historians today. Filled with original and exciting scholarship, this book will be equally important for specialists in map history and for those geographers, humanists, and mapmakers who want a rigorous discussion of how to understand and analyze maps. --William Rankin, author of After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territor For two decades Edney has produced thoughtful and penetrating scholarship. In his most ambitious work to date, he questions the very concept of 'cartography' to argue that this flawed ideal has hobbled the study of maps. With direct and tenacious prose, Edney has written an essential work that challenges us to grapple with the fundamental assumptions that undergird the field. --Susan Schulten, author of A History of America in 100 Maps [An] intellectually bracing and marvellously provocative account of how the mythical ideal of cartography developed over time and, in the process, distorted our understanding of maps. . . . He has convincingly overturned the presumptions of an entire discipline and those who both practise and study it. . . . Edney will undoubtedly remain at the heart of navigating our way through the seductive, perplexing and endlessly changing landscape of maps. --Times Higher Education Edney commands a breathtaking view of the history of map making. From his years of spadework in archives and classrooms to his perch at the helm of the massive History of Cartography project, he has gradually come to see fundamental problems in the very categories through which the cartographic enterprise is conventionally understood. Cartography: The Ideal and Its History offers both a sharp critique of current practice and a call to reorient the field of map studies. A landmark contribution. --Karen Wigen, coeditor of Cartographic Japan


Cartography concisely and clearly captures not just the main strands of Edney's own work over the last several decades, but also the major questions facing map historians today. Filled with original and exciting scholarship, this book will be equally important for specialists in map history and for those geographers, humanists, and mapmakers who want a rigorous discussion of how to understand and analyze maps. --William Rankin, author of After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territor For two decades Edney has produced thoughtful and penetrating scholarship. In his most ambitious work to date, he questions the very concept of 'cartography' to argue that this flawed ideal has hobbled the study of maps. With direct and tenacious prose, Edney has written an essential work that challenges us to grapple with the fundamental assumptions that undergird the field. --Susan Schulten, author of A History of America in 100 Maps Edney commands a breathtaking view of the history of map making. From his years of spadework in archives and classrooms to his perch at the helm of the massive History of Cartography project, he has gradually come to see fundamental problems in the very categories through which the cartographic enterprise is conventionally understood. Cartography: The Ideal and Its History offers both a sharp critique of current practice and a call to reorient the field of map studies. A landmark contribution. --K ren Wigen, coeditor of Cartographic Perspectives


For two decades Edney has produced thoughtful and penetrating scholarship. In his most ambitious work to date, he questions the very concept of 'cartography' to argue that this flawed ideal has hobbled the study of maps. With direct and tenacious prose, Edney has written an essential work that challenges us to grapple with the fundamental assumptions that undergird the field. --Susan Schulten, author of A History of America in 100 Maps Cartography concisely and clearly captures not just the main strands of Edney's own work over the last several decades, but also the major questions facing map historians today. Filled with original and exciting scholarship, this book will be equally important for specialists in map history and for those geographers, humanists, and mapmakers who want a rigorous discussion of how to understand and analyze maps. --William Rankin, author of After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territor [An] intellectually bracing and marvellously provocative account of how the mythical ideal of cartography developed over time and, in the process, distorted our understanding of maps. . . . He has convincingly overturned the presumptions of an entire discipline and those who both practise and study it. . . . Edney will undoubtedly remain at the heart of navigating our way through the seductive, perplexing and endlessly changing landscape of maps. --Times Higher Education Edney commands a breathtaking view of the history of map making. From his years of spadework in archives and classrooms to his perch at the helm of the massive History of Cartography project, he has gradually come to see fundamental problems in the very categories through which the cartographic enterprise is conventionally understood. Cartography: The Ideal and Its History offers both a sharp critique of current practice and a call to reorient the field of map studies. A landmark contribution. --Karen Wigen, coeditor of Cartographic Japan


[An] intellectually bracing and marvellously provocative account of how the mythical ideal of cartography developed over time and, in the process, distorted our understanding of maps. . . . He has convincingly overturned the presumptions of an entire discipline and those who both practise and study it. . . . Edney will undoubtedly remain at the heart of navigating our way through the seductive, perplexing and endlessly changing landscape of maps. -- Times Higher Education Cartography concisely and clearly captures not just the main strands of Edney's own work over the last several decades, but also the major questions facing map historians today. Filled with original and exciting scholarship, this book will be equally important for specialists in map history and for those geographers, humanists, and mapmakers who want a rigorous discussion of how to understand and analyze maps. -- William Rankin, author of After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territor For two decades Edney has produced thoughtful and penetrating scholarship. In his most ambitious work to date, he questions the very concept of 'cartography' to argue that this flawed ideal has hobbled the study of maps. With direct and tenacious prose, Edney has written an essential work that challenges us to grapple with the fundamental assumptions that undergird the field. -- Susan Schulten, author of A History of America in 100 Maps What is at stake is addressed in the short final chapter. The ideal of cartography is a sleight of hand because it conceives maps as crystallized depictions of the world that can be read back by map users and therefore diverts attention from the processes of their production, circulation and effects. Edney has written a powerful book, often laced with humour and gnomic chapter headings (my favourite is 'cartography is a map of mapping'). Edney has done a great job of bringing his arguments to a wider audience, and it will be interesting to see where he goes next. -- Imago Mundi Edney's Cartography provides a corrective, a reimagined intellectual framework for maps and mapping that will, when engaged and operationalized, greatly broaden our understanding of the wondrous array of inscriptions and practices we call maps and mapping. -- Isis Edney commands a breathtaking view of the history of map making. From his years of spadework in archives and classrooms to his perch at the helm of the massive History of Cartography project, he has gradually come to see fundamental problems in the very categories through which the cartographic enterprise is conventionally understood. Cartography: The Ideal and Its History offers both a sharp critique of current practice and a call to reorient the field of map studies. A landmark contribution. -- Karen Wigen, coeditor of Cartographic Japan


For two decades Edney has produced thoughtful and penetrating scholarship. In his most ambitious work to date, he questions the very concept of 'cartography' to argue that this flawed ideal has hobbled the study of maps. With direct and tenacious prose, Edney has written an essential work that challenges us to grapple with the fundamental assumptions that undergird the field. --Susan Schulten, author of A History of America in 100 Maps Cartography concisely and clearly captures not just the main strands of Edney's own work over the last several decades, but also the major questions facing map historians today. Filled with original and exciting scholarship, this book will be equally important for specialists in map history and for those geographers, humanists, and mapmakers who want a rigorous discussion of how to understand and analyze maps. --William Rankin, author of After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territor Edney commands a breathtaking view of the history of map making. From his years of spadework in archives and classrooms to his perch at the helm of the massive History of Cartography project, he has gradually come to see fundamental problems in the very categories through which the cartographic enterprise is conventionally understood. Cartography: The Ideal and Its History offers both a sharp critique of current practice and a call to reorient the field of map studies. A landmark contribution. --K ren Wigen, coeditor of Cartographic Perspectives


Author Information

Matthew H. Edney is the Osher Professor in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine. He directs the History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for which he has coedited Volume 4, Cartography in the European Enlightenment. He is a contributor to many books and author of Mapping anEmpire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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