Public Participatory Mapping

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) methods, now known as Participatory Learning and Action (PLA), have been extensively used in development research, action and evaluation. This book is based on the author's decade-long intensive field experience--each method is explained by drawing on field-based illustrations. The book vividly describes the methods of PRA, highlighting the essential features as well as the application, merits and limitations of each method.Participatory Rural Appraisal: Principles, Methods and Application outlines the application of PRA methodology in areas like participatory poverty assessment, sustainable livelihood analysis, assessment of hunger, vulnerability analysis, organizational analysis, monitoring and evaluation. Separate sections on SWOT analysis and on the method of interview and dialogue are also included in the book. Besides, the author has provided guidelines for sector-wise application of PRA, which would serve as a ready reference for students and practitioners alike. A chapter on the roles of members of a PRA team is another key feature of this book, which would be immensely valuable for students, researchers and academicians working in the areas of social work, rural development, agriculture, and environmental science, and also for NGO workers and trainers and researchers in the development field.

Making Community Connections calls for a more integrative look at the world we live in. Invariably, the Community Mapping Program makes more clearly visible the connections of various factors affecting the particular object of study. Concepts of sustainability, responsibility, integration, and the larger picture, find their way into classroom discussions and are then mapped in multiple different ways.

This volume ventures into terrain where even the most sophisticated map fails to lead--through the mapmaker's bias. Denis Wood shows how maps are not impartial reference objects, but rather instruments of communication, persuasion, and power. Like paintings, they express a point of view. By connecting us to a reality that could not exist in the absence of maps--a world of property lines and voting rights, taxation districts and enterprise zones--they embody and project the interests of their creators. Sampling the scope of maps available today, illustrations include Peter Gould's AIDS map, Tom Van Sant's map of the earth, U.S. Geological Survey maps, and a child's drawing of the world. THE POWER OF MAPS was published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Design.

A contemporary follow-up to the groundbreaking Power of Maps, this book takes a fresh look at what maps do, whose interests they serve, and how they can be used in surprising, creative, and radical ways. Denis Wood describes how cartography facilitated the rise of the modern state and how maps continue to embody and project the interests of their creators. He demystifies the hidden assumptions of mapmaking and explores the promises and limitations of diverse counter-mapping practices today. Thought-provoking illustrations include U.S. Geological Survey maps; electoral and transportation maps; and numerous examples of critical cartography, participatory GIS, and map art.