Fresh Thoughts on Mapping and GIS: cleanliness, temporality and sustainment

This paper locates geographic mapping, and the tools, terms and properties that articulate maps, within an array of practices that participate in the spatio-temporal dispositions of modernity. It argues that the claim currently being made for GIS-generated geographic maps, that they can play a significant role in addressing unsustainable practices, needs to be critically interrogated, given the resonance of mapping with cultural projects that tend to fuel unsustainable behaviours. Specifically, this paper points to a resonance between the production of maps, and the production of 'the fresh'. An unpacking of the cultural dispositions that inform both mapping and the fresh allows a rich picture of their pleasures and dangers to come to view