A Map Enters the Conversation: Digital Cartography and its Different Modes of Mattering

Over the past decade STS scholars have been engaged in a continuous dialogue about the performativity of their methods and the interventions of their research practices. A frequently posed question is how STS can make a difference to its fields of study, what John Law has called its different 'modes of mattering'. In this paper I explore what difference digital cartography can make to STS practice. I draw on three examples from my own work where digitally mediated maps have entered the conversation and made critical, often surprising, differences to the research process. In my first example the map is brought along as an ethnographic device on a piece of fieldwork, in my second example it serves as the central collaborative object in a participatory design project, and in my third example the map becomes the object of contestation as it finds itself centre stage in the controversy it was trying to chart. I use these examples to discuss the potential modes of mattering afforded by digital cartography in STS.