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Within the existing body of geographical work on touch, the haptic and the surficial, as well as within the emerging field of haptic media studies, cartography has not yet been specifically considered. Moving beyond a technical examination of special tactile map products, this article explores the tactile, haptic and surficial qualities of everyday cartographic experiences in digital, non-digital and mixed formats. These qualities are researched through a phenomenologicalaesthetic lens, a sensuous disposition and a creative sensibility, thus enacting what could be described as 'non-representational cartography'. Drawing from multisensory visual ethnography, this paper explores the perspective of 'tactile empathy' through photographic/video recordings based on the matching of seen and experienced touch described by neuroscientists. Some personal 'map stories' generate a possible agenda for the study of haptic cartographies, which includes: representations of cartographic tactility; 3D sensations; cartographic surfaces; the spatialities of maps; gestures, or maps as a touch space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we document current research into new forms of public engagement presently taking place in UK biodiversity policy. This involves locating the main participants in such patterns of engagement; namely nature, amateur naturalists, and professional biologists and conservationists. Two interwoven and mutually interdependent perspectives or `imaginaries' -- the `cartographic' and the `ethnographic' -- are presented in the paper to explore the shaping and interpretation of such new forms of engagement. However, in this context the interest lies in the ways in which either perspective is foregrounded or backgrounded by the different parties involved. The described shifts and movements of a range of actors and processes being studied demonstrate the fluidity and instability of networks of 'knowing nature well', whose stability is often assumed. The tracing of two constants - expertise and exchange - within networks inhabited by nature and by amateur and professional naturalists allows for an exploration of ways in which social/natural inclusions and exclusions occur in new participatory practices designed as part of biodiversity action planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I focus on a local initiative to produce a hiking map of Valtaleggio (in northern Italy). In the effort of redrawing the valley to attract tourism a group of locals engaged in planning and negotiating visibility, but also got involved in an exercise of memory, remembering the history of their valley through recent changes in the landscape. The ethnographic observation of the 'map enterprise' spurs reflections on differing local perceptions of the landscape—and, accordingly, on how practices of locality shape identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]