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Map Collecting Practices
Chris Perkins
Geography, SED, University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL, UK
c.perkins@manchester.ac.uk
Abstract
There has been only limited comparison of the different contexts in which
maps have been brought together, and hardly any critical consideration of
the contours of map collection. This paper aims to begin to correct some
of these gaps by starting to chart the changing contemporary significance
of map collecting, to explore its variations and to explain differences in
individual map collecting practices. It is grounded in social theoretical
approaches to the wider world of collecting and in the literature around post-
Harleian critical cartography. The unique characteristics of map collecting
are explored, and a detailed comparison of map collecting practices of
British antiquarian and everyday map collectors is presented, following an
investigation of textual sources and an ethnography of collecting practices
and spaces. Differences between the collecting fields of elite antiquarian
practices, as against more prosaic everyday collecting suggest that we need
to understand map collecting practices as 'placed behaviour', in which
economic relations are mediated by local culture and places.
1- Introduction
Writing about collecting has taken a critical turn in the last twentyfive
years. Collecting has been read as a reflection of organizational values e.g.
Pearce (1995), and of individual psychology e.g. Muensterberger (1994).
Researchers have explored relations of collecting to leisure, disposable in-
come, the consumer society (e.g. Belk 1995), and material culture (Miller
1987). Post-modern explanations have interpreted collecting as Debordian
spectacle (Gregson and Crewe 2003), or the economy of identity formation
(Baudrillard 1995). Perhaps the most important lesson is to follow Elsner
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