J. B. Harley, Paul Laxton, J. H. Andrews

In contrast, the idea of a power internal to cartography stresses that power is not separate from knowledge. It is an integral part of the practices that create knowledge and of the way maps—as a particular form of knowledge—work in society. It is universal, being found wherever maps are made, but equally it creates a local knowledge dependent on context. The focus of inquiry, therefore, shifts from the place of cartography in a juridical system of power to the political effects of what cartographers do when they make maps. We find that cartographers cease to be "nonpolitical agents" in society, above or beyond politics. Inasmuch as power traverses the everyday workshop practices of map making, the atlas maker—albeit often unwittingly—was inevitably concerned with the manufacture of power.