Journal | JoLMA
Journal issue | 5 | 1 | 2024
Research Article | Maps and the Epistemic Risks of Visual Representation
Maps and the Epistemic Risks of Visual Representation
Abstract
Bad maps misrepresent and mislead. They hide important truths and misdirect our attention. Often, they are self‑serving, promoting the values of their makers. But it is not easy to delineate what counts as a good map. Even ‘good’ maps that are useful, illuminating, and accurate according to their representational conventions can still mislead us, hide important patterns, and distort our understanding. In constructing a map, we necessarily balance at least three sorts of epistemic risks, which I name aesthetic risks, categorization risks, and simplification risks. Balancing these risks is always a value‑laden process. Maps that employ an ‘aesthetics of neutrality’ can be distinctively misleading by hiding their own value‑laden perspective under an aesthetic veneer of scientific objectivity.
Submitted: Jan. 18, 2024 | Accepted: Feb. 8, 2024 | Published July 26, 2024 | Language: en
Keywords Maps • Aesthetics in Science • Epistemic Risk • Geographic Information Systems • Representational Risk
Copyright © 2024 Quill Kukla. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Jolma/2723-9640/2024/01/002
