Counter-mapping

One set of maps belonged to state forest managers, and the international financial institutions that supported them, such as the World Bank.

This strategy recognised mapping as a means of protecting local claims to territory and resources to a government that had previously ignored them.

[3] The goal of the second set of maps was to co-opt the cartographic conventions of the Indonesian state, to legitimise the claims by the Dayak people, indigenous to Kalimantan, to the rights to forest use.

[3] As such, counter-mapping strategies in Kalimantan have led to successful community action to block, and protest against, oil palm plantations and logging concessions imposed by the central government.

[13] Clifford[14] exemplifies this notion, affirming: "making a parish map is about creating a community expression of values, and about beginning to assert ideas for involvement.

The final map product is typically an artistic artefact, usually painted, and often displayed in village halls or schools.

[17] Prior to the 1960s, equipping a map-making enterprise was chiefly the duty of a single agency, funded by the national government.

[6] Neoliberalism denotes an emphasis on markets and minimal states, whereby individual choice is perceived to have replaced the mass-production of commodities.

[27] In this new regime of neoliberal cartographic governmentality the "insurrection of subjugated knowledges" occurs,[26] as counter-mapping initiatives incorporate previously marginalised voices.

[28] The wide availability of high-quality location information has enabled mass-market cartography based on Global Positioning System receivers, home computers, and the internet.

[29] The fact that civilians are using technologies which were once elitist led Brosius et al..[30] to assert that counter-mapping involves "stealing the master's tools".

[31] Similarly, the use of scale model constructions and felt boards, as means of representing cartographic claims of different groups, have become increasingly popular.

For instance, Kyem[32] designed a PPGIS method termed Exploratory Strategy for Collaboration, Management, Allocation, and Planning (ESCMAP).

The method sought to integrate the concerns and experiences of three rural communities in the Ashanti Region of Ghana into official forest management practices.

[32] Kyem[32] concluded that, notwithstanding the potential of PPGIS, it is possible that the majority of the rich and powerful people in the area would object to some of the participatory uses of GIS.

More recently, Wood et al..[11] disputed the notion of PPGIS entirely, affirming that it is "scarcely GIS, intensely hegemonic, hardly public, and anything but participatory".

Governance makes problematic state-centric notions of regulation, recognising that there has been a shift to power operating across several spatial scales.

[33] Similarly, counter-mapping complicates state distribution of cartography, advocating bottom-up participatory mapping projects (see GIS and environmental governance).

Another characteristic of governance is its "purposeful effort to steer, control or manage sectors or facets of society" towards a common goal.

[38] Participatory counter-mapping projects are an effective means of incorporating lay knowledges[39] into issues surrounding environmental governance.

For instance, counter-maps depicting traditional use of areas now protected for biodiversity have been used to allow resource use, or to promote public debate about the issue, rather than forcing relocation.

[8] For example, the World Wide Fund for Nature used the results of counter-mapping to advocate for the reclassification of several strictly protected areas into Indonesian national parks, including Kayan Mentarang and Gunung Lorentz.

In 1967, Frank Arthur Calder and the Nisaga'a Nation Tribal Council brought an action against the Province of British Columbia for a declaration that aboriginal title to specified land had not been lawfully extinguished.

[45] Indigenous peoples have begun remapping areas of the world that were once occupied by their ancestors as an act of reclamation of land stolen from them by country governments.

Specifically in Peru, Indigenous peoples are using mapping to identify problem areas and innovating and creating strategies to combat these risks for the future.

Indigenous peoples' territory often ended at rivers, mountains, and hills or were defined by relationships between different tribes, resources, and trade networks.

In a special case, after the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase, the United States had to decide between the territory where slavery was legal and where it was not.

[52] In short, the grassroots OSM project can be seen to represent a paradigm shift in who creates and shares geographic information - from the state, to society.

[57] East Timor's ongoing effort to gain control of gas and oil resources from Australia, which it perceives at its own, is a form of counter-mapping.