Maps and Civilization

Technology and culture Book Reviews 979 New York. Her book Motherhood Lost: Cultural Constructions of Pregnancy Loss in the United States will be published by Routledge. Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society. By Norman J. W. Thrower. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Pp. xiii+326; illustrations, tables, appendixes, notes, index. $55.00 (cloth); $17.95 (paper). As a brief, one-volume survey of cartography in Western Europe and North America, this book provides an accessible introduction to a subject that remains as unfamiliar as it is interesting to nonspe­ cialists. The map as an artifact and document has an intrinsic at­ traction quite apart from its utility. Norman J. W. Thrower explains that “the theme of this book is to show how the map reflects society and culture” (p. 198). But the changing relationship between maps and society is merely evoked, not explored. This book is a revision of Thrower’s Maps and Man (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1972), with additional material and notes to reflect research in the history of cartography in the intervening years as well as advances in cartography itself, principally associated with computers. Both books are essentially a chronological presenta­ tion of the main innovations in cartography, as regards both specific conventions (symbols, projections, etc.) and map types (topo­ graphic, national survey, thematic, etc.). This is useful, but the orga­ nization is sometimes difficult to follow, as seemingly unrelated top­ ics succeed each other in a chapter simply to fit the information in. There is also some repetition in the chronology, as it is not possible to treat all the developments affecting different aspects of cartogra­ phy in the same period altogether. Thus, it is up to the reader to consider how and why different types of maps or different conven­ tions evolved in relation to each other. Readers of T&Cwould note that Thrower has very little to say about instruments and technolo­ gies used in gathering information to make maps and in producing them. The relationship among map design, map use, and map pro­ duction is almost entirely neglected. In the quarter-century since Maps and Man appeared, the history of cartography has emerged as a distinctive field on its own. The multivolume History of Cartography being produced by the University ofChicago Press under the editorship ofDavid Woodward is possible only because the quantity and quality of scholarship have advanced so far. Fundamental to the development of the field in recent years has been an effort to analyze and explain the relation between carto­ graphic developments, on the one hand, and social, political and cultural trends, on the other. This difficult undertaking, which owed much toJ. B. Harley, Woodward’s coeditor until his untimely death 980 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE in 1992, engaged historians of cartography with communications theory, postmodernist criticism, semiotics, and much else. Taken to­ gether, these approaches have compromised the idea that scientific objectivity and technical prowess are the principal criteria by which cartographic advances should be judged. But these have remained Thrower’s standards. Although he cites works in the “new” history ofcartography, there is little evidence that he has tried to apply their insights to his historical narrative. Historians of technology might wish to reflect upon a comment by the author concerning the relation between practice and study. In a footnote, Thrower observes that “many who have written on the history of cartography have never actually made an original, pro­ fessional map, which is rather like passing a written driving test with­ out being able to operate a car” (p. 261, n. 7). As if to balance his remark, Thrower also observes that cartographers “are frequently so involved with a few cartographic techniques as not to be able to comprehend the larger field.” But the thrust of his remarks is to suggest that cartographers are perhaps better equipped than histori­ ans to write the history of their field. This argument is too familiar to readers of these pages to merit further comment. Taken to an extreme, it will result in the emptying out of history, with every craft telling its own story. If maps are about space and history is about time, both are

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Artifact (error) · Cartography · Civilization · Geography · Humanities · Index (typography) · Sociology · Thematic map · Theme (computing) · Anthropology · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Geographic Information Systems Studies · Historical Geography and Cartography · History