Center for Intercultural Dialogue Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue

Cultural Mapping Nancy Duxbury Senior Researcher, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal

What is it? Fit with intercultural dialogue? Cultural mapping is a systematic tool to involve Cultural mapping – and in particular, its counter- communities in the identification and recording of mapping traditions and trajectories – highlights and local cultural assets, with the implication that this aims to privilege plural perspectives and “alternate” knowledge will then be used to inform collective knowledges, histories, and meanings. In the context strategies, planning processes, or other initiatives. of growing recognition that significant aspects of Cultural mapping promises new ways of describing, culture are contained in the intangible dimensions of accounting for, and coming to terms with the cultural cultural practices and knowledge systems, resources of communities and places. These UNESCO views cultural mapping as a means to resources are both tangible or quantitative and transform intangible and invisible knowledge into a intangible or qualitative. medium that can support heritage management, Who uses the concept? education, and intercultural dialogue. Cultural mapping encompasses an array of What work remains? traditions and trajectories that focus on different Key issues in the highly interdisciplinary field of dimensions and approaches to understanding cultural mapping include the questions of what to cultural meanings and resources. For example, map, how to map, and to what purpose the since the turn of the millennium, the rising “findings” should be directed. Issues of power, prominence of so-called “creative industries” resistance, alternative perspectives and knowledge, internationally has meant cultural policy-related and the question of what constitutes important mapping research has tended to focus on defining cultural elements and meanings, are situated at the and measuring the economic dimensions of cultural centre of the field. The process of making implicit and creative industries and on mapping the knowledge explicit, and mobilizing the symbolic presence and development of these desirable forms through which local residents understand and sectors. However, this comprises only portions of communicate their sense of place, also have ethical the field. Cultural mapping also encompasses and political dimensions. artistic and counter-mapping traditions that prioritize the qualitative and intangible, valorize alternative Resources perspectives, and widen the ways in which we Crawhall, N. (2009). The role of participatory understand cultural resources within broader cultural mapping in promoting intercultural community systems, relationships, and fields of dialogue - ‘We are not hyenas’: A reflection meaningful interaction. In these ways, cultural paper. Paris: UNESCO. mapping aims to recognize and make visible the Duxbury, N., Garrett-Petts, W. F., & McLennan, D. ways local stories, practices, relationships, (Eds.). (2015). Cultural mapping as cultural memories, and rituals constitute places as inquiry. New York: Routledge. meaningful locations.

Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, No. 69, 2015 http://centerforinterculturaldialogue.org