ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the multiple natures and histories of maps and mapping through the lens of mapping processes and spatial practices, and provides some suggestions for how to read maps as human documents. By raising issues of social and cultural relations – for example, by drawing attention to the role of maps as intellectual resources, access to which has varied by class, gender and ethnicity – map history has stimulated critical approaches to cartography. The historical exploration of map forms and mapping strategies reveals that mapping does not constitute a singular endeavour: 'cartography' comprises only a specific suite of academic and professional discourses that by no means encompass all mapping activities. A broad review both of different mapping strategies and of the communities involved in mapping reveals something of a pattern, or at least the realization that different mapping activities fall into a number of largely distinct 'modes'.
