Call for Papers «Spatial Justice and Cartography»

http://www.jssj.org/contribution-call/justice-spatiale-et-cartographie/

CfP for a thematic issue of Justice Spatiale / Spatial Justice on “Spatial Justice and Cartography”.

Justice spatiale | Spatial Justice is a bilingual peer-reviewed journal. This thematic issue accepts submissions of articles in English, French or Spanish. 

The deadline for full papers is March 31, 2025. Publication is expected in 2026. Authors who have questions about the relevance of their proposal can contact the dossier coordination team.

Carlos Salamanca Villamizar| Nuria Font Casaseca | Nuria Benach Rovira | Manuel Bayón Jiménez

Spatial Justice and Cartography

Throughout history, cartography has played a pivotal role in the construction of world orders, shaping not only territorial boundaries but also identities and forms of otherness. As a tool for representing the world, cartography has been central to imagining empires and constructing socio-spatial relations. Yet, cartography is not a neutral discipline. It is deeply intertwined with power, interests, and ideologies, making it both a product and producer of social injustices. Today, the relationship between cartography and spatial justice is more relevant than ever, especially as technological advancements and participatory practices challenge traditional modes of mapmaking.

This special issue seeks to provide a structured ground for exploring the complex links between cartography and spatial justice. Recognizing the field’s vast scope and blurred boundaries, we aim to foster a plural and diverse problematization of these links through three guiding dimensions. First, cartography is understood as a set of social and political practices shaped by diverse actors, interests, and formats. These practices reflect specific epistemologies and objectives. Second, cartography functions as a discipline, comprising systematic concepts, techniques, and methodologies for producing spatial representations, influenced by the historical and geographical contexts in which it operates. Third, cartography is viewed as an object—a collection of spatial representations that can be critically analyzed, questioned, and interpreted. 

These dimensions, when considered in relation to spatial justice, offer multiple perspectives for exploration. The first one has to do with the practices that allow us to see the territorial dimension of situations like unequal access to resources and services and unequal distribution of the impacts that certain policies and processes have on particular sectors of society. Through in-situ and concrete practices, a wide variety of social actors are «contesting» and challenging the apparent objectivity and neutrality of maps to unveil the interests at stake, the situated nature of cartographic knowledge they hide and the preconceptions through which some experiences, bodies and knowledge are stigmatized.

The second dimension relates to the way some technical and technological advances allow different sectors of the population to make certain spatial representations. Genders, ages, cultural identities or social class differences play a determinant role in those representations. This is connected to the changes suffered by cartography due to the exponential expansion in the production and use of cartographic representations and to Geographic Information Systems tools becoming popular. Technological advances are indeed configuring a displacement of the «official» places where cartography was produced from States towards other types of actors such as private companies, social organizations or the media. Thus, the increasingly widespread access to forms of cartographic production is redefining who can use the power of maps, displacing the old mechanisms of authority, legitimacy and truth contributing, therefore, to greater plurality. However, cartographic production lays the necessary technical bases for specific forms of consumption, subjectivity and sensitivity that seem to have the ability to neutralize the political power of such plurality, limiting the possibilities of broad and transversal action and thought.

The third dimension of questioning cartographies within the framework of spatial justice focuses on the processes through which maps are imagined, designed, and produced. This involves examining how maps are created in contexts such as trials and public affairs, highlighting the power relations, interactions, and strategies that shape their production. The aim is to analyze how maps contribute to a fair, democratic, and balanced use of territory, both in urban and rural settings. We encourage research that explores the multiple actors, interests, and techniques involved in cartographic creation, considering maps not just as representations, but as dynamic tools for advocacy, visibility, and forensic action in fields like law, policy, and the arts. Understanding how maps move through different circuits and are used in public debates is central to this inquiry.

This special edition is based on the experiences of the proposing team’s members. Located in different latitudes and in different positions, these experiences combine academic fields, collaborative networks, participatory research, legal aspects and public debate. We value the process and the result, and we are driven by the goal of opening academic debate and development

Guiding themes of this issue: 

Axis 1. Practices that allow for visualizing, problematizing or questioning spatial injustice situations:  – Cartographic experiences that promote spatial justice from different purposes and social processes. – Experiences about cartographies development that relate to judicial processes or mass or community media. – Problematizations of hegemonic cartographies as a tool for social justice. – Community cartographic processes of resistance and recovery of collective memories.

Axis 2. Cartography and spatial justice. Conceptual openings and methodological innovation and socio-territorial disputes: – Disputes in the way of understanding cartography itself, especially through ontological, indigenous, queer, relational or mobility shifts. – Conceptual developments around cartography in relation to spatial (in)justice. – Methodological and technological innovations in using cartography against spatial injustices. – Effects and potential uses of Geographic Information Systems at different levels.

Axis 3. Cartographies as objects, narratives and representations: – Cartographies that contributed to highlight socio-spatial injustice relations. – Circuits in the distribution of maps at different levels. – Analyses that highlight the performative effects of producing and disseminating certain cartographic productions.

Instructions for authors 

Authors should send their complete articles to the thematic issue coordinators by March 31, 2025. Publication is expected in 2026.

Articles in French or Spanish (7,000 words maximum; bibliography and abstract included) or in English (6,000 words maximum; bibliography and abstract included) should be sent to the journal at contactjssj.org@gmail.com and to the issue coordination team (addresses below).

Justice spatiale | Spatial Justice is a bilingual peer-reviewed journal. Articles may be based on a case study or offer a more theoretical perspective. The journal uses a double-blind review, which means that all articles are reviewed anonymously. Please follow the recommendations for authors available online on the journal website: http://www.jssj.org/recommandations-aux-auteurs/.

Special Issue coordinators 

Carlos Salamanca Villamizar: CONICET- Geography Institute of the University of Buenos Aires, Head of cartographic practices in Latin America diploma. National University of Rosario, Argentina, Javeriana University, Colombia. salamanca.carlos@gmail.com 

Nuria Benach Rovira: Professor of Geography at the University of Barcelona. Member of Espais Crítics group. nuriabenach@ub.edu 

Nuria Font Casaseca: Postdoctoral researcher at Pompeu Fabra University and Professor of Geography at the University of Barcelona. Member of Espais Crítics group. nuriafont@ub.edu 

Manuel Bayón: Researcher at the College of Mexico, PhD at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, member of the Critical Geography Collective of Ecuador. geomanuelbayon@gmail.com