Hypercarte: social mapping

Recently, a research center Géographie-Cités [CNRS UMR 8504] in the Université Paris I based in Paris is organizing a research program and analytic tool. Called Hypercarte, this project seeks to be an interactive tool, to represent and question graphically social phenomenons. This mapping project follows the social and political demand that could be adressed by cartography. Neither the main classical atlases nor the new GIS systems seem to respond to this new need by the social sciences and the society at large.

The main hypothesis of the Hypercarte rely on the idea that any type of 'spatialisation' of any social phenomenon can follow any type of representation depending on the designer, the purposes of the actual etc.. In that sense, the theoritical approach is close to the one given by Simmel meaning that any representations like the Hypercarte are imperfect attempts to reconstruct the social reality and are at the same time also necessary for our understanding of the production of social processes.

The web site of Hypercarte is a rich ressource for those interested in mapping social facts, phenomenons, processes...some examples of maps can give you an idea of the software. A history of the project gives you insightful information on the origins and perspectives of the Hypercarte.