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RUSSIAN–UKRAINIAN CONFLICT OVER CRIMEA ON THE MAP
Abstract
As much as guns and warships, maps have been used as tools of imperialism. Nations and empires are not natural features within the landscape. They are social constructs, created in order to convert the Earth into a huge real-estate market. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict is not fought only in Ukraine, but also on every map, that shows Crimea. Cartography was coined as a science of princes, as it was these elites who used maps to take land and natural resources from those without power – local people. In the last three decades we have observed enormous advances in technologies and that has resulted in the democratisation of cartography and Geographic information systems. This has led to new approaches in mapping, such as critical cartography, counter mapping, GeoParticipation as well as carto-vandalism. In this paper the authors discuss the role of maps in the political struggle for a specific area – the Crimean peninsula. The paper aims to ignite the discussion about the social implications of maps as tools of power and technological dominance in the current digitalised world. It results in three thematic maps designed to represent attitudes of selected map providers towards mapping the Russian-Ukrainian conflict over Crimea by the end of 2014.
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