Scholars Award: Map Wars: The History and Sociology of Mapping Practices in Israel and the Palestinian Territories

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

Introduction This project explores the interlinkages between science, politics and state-making. The focus is on how the geographical sciences become entangled with politics, territorial claim making, and nation-state building in Israel and the Palestinian Territories since 1948 until today. Qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviewing, ethnography, and archival and library research will be used. Intellectual Merits This project investigates: how geography, cartography and mapping practices have become entwined with the building of nation-states; how social, institutional, and political contexts shape map-making; how various actors, institutions, and governments use maps to shape territorial visions; and how maps relate to material structures (such as the West Bank Barrier). The project also aims to develop a systematic and comprehensive methodology to analyze how social and political concerns become embedded in the visual rhetoric of maps. Potential Broader Impacts New mapping technologies and software greatly enable user-defined mapping practices. As a result, various social groups increasingly disseminate alternative mappings. In such an environment it is especially pertinent to focus scholarly attention on developing conceptual tools for understanding the rhetoric of mapping practices. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute over mapping provides a rich context for theorizing about alternative mapping practices so as to emphasize the importance of constructing integrative maps that recover diverse geopolitical visions. A careful analyses of how and why different adversarial groups map the same territory differently may serve as a resource for reconciliation; it will contribute to a better understanding of the historical and political genealogy of such diverging practices and provide insight into the social-ethnic histories of diverse populations in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and in other suitably similar contexts.