Marking Territory and Mapping Development; Protected Area Designation in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

"As 'political discourse in the service of the state' (Harley 1988), maps have been made to facilitate and legitimate conquest, define the state as a spatial entity, and construct postcolonial nationalisms (Anderson 1991; Biggs 1995). Cartographers have also helped to produce the 'social space of development,' but in this context maps have other ends. Examining the interplay between the makers and users of the maps of state formation and the maps of development can reveal much about the political consequences of maps as spatial narratives. In this paper, I offer a rough typology of the maps of state formation and development and show how the Dominican state has appropriated the maps of development for nationalist ends, translating a globalizing resource management narrative into a nationalist, territorializing story that legitimates military control over regions of refuge."