Teaching counter-cartographies #3 - Acting in- and out-side the classroom: collective mapping for an engaged teaching

Abstract

In November and December of 2023, we led a three weeks workshop-cycle on collective critical mapping at the University of Padova, in the frame of the Course Geographical Space: Concepts, tools and practices of the Master’s Degree in Local Development, with international students coming from various parts of the world, with different personal and academic backgrounds. The idea of making a critical mapping workshop an integral part of a Master’s course was shaped by the urgency to introduce students to participatory tools and, what’s more, to invite them to a critical and activist approach to social research. In this sense, applying concrete projects of collective critical mapping on relevant topics, and in dialogue with local activist groups appeared as an appropriate way to rethink ways of doing and thinking “development”. Furthermore, we hoped to open discussions on dominant ways of imagining the world and make the map an instrument to visualize underrepresented voices and experiences, to expose injustices and promote progressive struggles. Yet, the idea of a practical mapping activity within the course’s framework was also related to the feedback from the previous year’s students – regarding the importance of learning to think critically, on the one hand, and expressing a feeling of powerlessness to act in the face of global injustice, on the other (Caretta & Pepa, 2023). So, the urgency was, indeed, to create a space to think through a pedagogy, and geography, of hope (Lopez, 2023) – to make the classroom a radical space of possibility to put it in bell hooks’ (1994) most inspiring words.