Cartographies of Health: From Remote to Intimate Sensing

Abstract

Within geographies of health, mapping remains an important research element, with a complex and mobile history that moves beyond the subject into other branches of the humanities. This paper will critically discuss, under the banner of cartographies of health, how mapping, as both process and form, informs health and wellbeing in different ways. In discussing mappings of health in place, I introduce the history of cartography to trace a number of important genealogies of practice. These have included shifts from cartographic to citizen science and from official and remotely generated maps to more intimate mappings of place. The shift from distant to more intimate inscriptions of health in place can also be tracked within health geography in moves towards a more-than-medical focus and a deeper understanding on places and spaces that enable wellbeing and human flourishing. Many newer forms of place mapping - what Casey calls 'somatography' - have a strong focus on health and wellbeing, with experience, embodiment and emotion all significant components. This essay will document empirical examples of citizen mappings of health and wellbeing, drawn from a range of culturally shaped global settings including Cambodia, the USA and Ireland. Finally, such new mappings also utilise creative and artistic approaches that, alongside new forms of sensory technologies, open up possibilities to explore how different spaces, built and natural, operate as co-producers of new knowledge on health practices across societies.