Maps transformed village-centered sacred space into abstract conquerable space

Evidence

The diffusion of the technical, scientific innovations of the map and the mechanical clock were very significant in this context. The increasing use of maps transformed the “natural,” place-bound idea of space, the center of which was constituted by “the village,” as the main standpoint of the observer whose lifeworld horizon was arranged in concentric circles of decreasing familiarity, into a somewhat “placeless” form of abstract spatial perception with a variable center. It is easy to see that this perspective opens up new possibilities of conceptualizing space as controllable and conquerable because it places the observer into a transformed relationship to space. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 305

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the map-as-epistemology literature (e.g. McMullin’s isthmus and the way instruments reshape perception); also connects to any history-of-cartography reading on how maps aided colonial conquest. — connects to: Modern transport shifts orientation from space to time — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 309; Maps can construct territory rather than merely represent it — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 661; Commodification of land, not utopian design, universalized abstract space — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1614 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Maps can construct territory rather than merely represent it #corroborates (0.85) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 661
• Commodification of land, not utopian design, universalized abstract space #expands (0.80) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1614
• The Bible and Classics served Europeans as cognitive maps for new lands #exemplifies (0.80) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 315
• Rural folk religion reinforces group boundaries through local sacred markers #complicates (0.75)
• The logic of mapping the world is structurally inexhaustible expansion #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 475
• The map now precedes and engenders the territory, not the reverse #expands (0.75) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 6