The same map technology can serve either subversive or centralizing political ends

Evidence

But, as Helgerson points out, maps could just as easily function ‘in untroubled support of a strongly centralized monarchic regime,’ though Philip II of Spain thought his maps sufficiently subversive to keep them under lock and key as a state secret. Colbert’s plans for a rational spatial integration of the French nation state (focused as much upon the enhancement of trade and commerce as upon administrative efficiency) are typical of the deployment of the ‘cold rationality’ of maps used for instrumental ends in support of centralized state power. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1585

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the flexible-accumulation argument: spatial tools are politically polyvalent depending on who wields them — parallels how the same technologies of flexible accumulation entrench either capital or labor. — connects to: Maps can construct territory rather than merely represent it — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 661; Maps can precede and shape territorial reality rather than merely reflect it. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 660; Scientific mapping in Sudan functioned as a political act of appropriation (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Maps can construct territory rather than merely represent it #expands (0.82) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 661
• Maps can precede and shape territorial reality rather than merely reflect it. #expands (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 660
• Scientific mapping in Sudan functioned as a political act of appropriation #exemplifies (0.75)