Tactical maptivism. Conceptualizing counter-mapping practices as a political tactic

Activists, civic initiatives, and grassroots groups increasingly use web-based mapping platforms to acquire, create, represent, and share knowledge about space-related social and ecological conflicts. The political relevance of these activities is emphasized by phrases such as "maptivism". The potential political implications of counter-maps have been discussed broadly in critical cartography and critical GIS. But while constructivist and more-than-representational perspectives (in the field of political geography) suggest to closely look at practices and processes of societal articulation to understand their political significance, there are few conceptual approaches that enable a thorough analysis of how counter-mapping practices may constitute political significance. Inspired by and building on research on tactical mapping (Elwood&Mitchell 2013, Lin 2013), this paper outlines a conceptual framework to study how counter-mapping practices may be sites for the political formation of subjects, the political formation of interpretive frames and the political formation of shared knowledge. This framework uses Certeau's term of tactics as a starting point - which is sensitive to the activits' relatively marginalized positions, to the temporalities of mapping efforts and to the creative, tactical ways of using mapping platforms - and understands counter-mapping practices in terms of a media-cultural articulation within processes of societal negotiation of space-related conflicts. The conceptual approach is illustrated on the basis of an activists mapping project. In the outlook, the paper suggests combining two methods for analyzing such activists mapping in accordance with the conceptual framework.