Review of Object-Oriented Cartography: Maps as Things by Tania Rossetto

Book review
Cartographic Perspectives
2020

Object-Oriented Cartography: Maps as Things invites readers to consider new ways of relating to cartographic images and practices. Drawing from recent advances across diverse academic fields such as object-oriented ontology, critical cartography, and visual studies, Rossetto provides a deeply personal account of our everyday interactions with maps. She accomplishes this through an innovative research methodology that foregrounds the relational, phenomenological, and agential capacities of spatial representations, illuminated by practical examples and inventive case studies. The book’s overarching project is to re-imagine maps as more than flat representations of an external reality, and to see them instead as lively actors that shape our world in powerful and intimate ways.