Summary

Social cartography is a method for qualitative research in education. It has been used mostly in comparative and international education, but it has wider applications. It originated from the body of work of Rolland Paulston, who outlined its main conceptual premises and methodological propositions. Unlike other cartographic practices that are mostly concerned with mapping of physical space, social cartography was developed with the purpose of providing a research tool that is capable of mapping relations between and within various epistemic communities and discursive and interpretative frameworks. The practice of social cartography seeks to challenge the positivist and objectivist imperative for singular, “authentic” knowledge and to disrupt the universalizing and totalizing claims of dominant perspectives and frameworks. It does so by mapping the complex and overlapping relations between different discursive and epistemic communities and by situating them in a broader discursive field. Post-representational approaches to social cartography emphasize the agentic properties of maps. These approaches work both on and with the mapmaker and the map reader in ways that seek to trouble and interrupt usual investments in meaning-making and epistemic and discursive privilege.