This form of mapping is an “extension practice” of radical or critical cartography, as conceptualized and developed in the 1970s by David Harvey and especially William Bunge with Gwendolyn Warren, following the civil rights movements in the United States. After being widely and effectively used in political contexts to reveal and denounce injustice, violations of international law or fundamental human rights, this cartographic approach has evolved toward more intimate, immersive, and sensorial dimensions.
This practice invites us to mobilize all our senses and to be attentive to our emotions, both during data collection and the creative process itself: our sight—to finally notice what we usually look at without seeing; our hearing—to listen to the sounds we often ignore; our sense of smell, taste, and touch—to fully grasp what is truly important in the atmosphere of a place. Lastly, it calls upon what we often refer to as our “sixth sense”: our intuition, our ability to feel and interpret reality through the lens of our imagination. This opens the way for poetic and artistic expression, and for the development of our creative sensibility—especially through the use of color, form, and movement.
In this sense, we might speak of “experiential cartography”: a drawn expression of our embodied presence in places where we physically have been or are. It may also be “memorial,” as it reconstructs places based on impressions and perceptions rooted in memory and “transmitted territorial knowledge”—especially relevant when Indigenous communities undertake mapping their ancestral lands.
Since the early 1990s, many citizen collectives around the world have embraced this form of expression, recognizing its power as a medium for advancing and defending their causes—particularly those related to social and spatial justice. Artist and activist groups have adopted and shaped this practice under a rich variety of names: radical cartography, critical cartography, participatory, collective, sensorial, emotional, olfactory, experiential, mental, perceptual mapping—and even counter-cartography (though this term is now debated). It has thus taken on a militant and activist dimension, in service of communities, minorities, and citizens more broadly.
In parallel, academic groups focused on critical and radical mapping have also emerged, giving rise to laboratories and university programs dedicated to the practice and theory of critical, radical, and experimental cartography—exploring the full diversity of its uses and perspectives.
Since 2021, the “Embodied Ecologies” project, led by anthropologist Anita Hardon in the Department Knowledge Technology and Innovation, has integrated sensorial mapping into its research methods, using it as a tool of investigation alongside interviews and field surveys.
The outcomes of these ongoing experiments are already very promising, showing how this approach enriches anthropological research.
For researchers, it enables the “territorialization” of interviews and a deeper understanding of territories—sometimes ancestral domains—in their sacred and intimate dimensions. It also brings greater awareness of spatiality, particularly the significance of distance, in shaping the complex social and economic processes lived by communities.
For the communities themselves, this practice has led to what might be called “synthetic illustrations”—clear, accessible visual representations of subtle and complex issues that are often obscured in traditional qualitative or quantitative data. It also offers a new perspective on their own living spaces, revealing potential and enabling new ways of understanding them.
Moreover, the act of mapping emotions has helped communities overcome psychological barriers and gain insight into the reasons behind certain spatial practices and their own social positions in the spaces they map. In this sense, this method acts as a revelatory tool in ethnographic research—enabling the map to dialogue with written texts and to reveal overlooked phenomena, processes, or dynamics. It thus allows for a revisiting of the past, a reconnection with the present, and a projection toward possible futures.