Power relations, hegemonic worldviews and regimes of visibility are represented and enacted through maps. This has been a long-term concern in critical cartography, which offers analytical and conceptual tools that can benefit peace and conflict research, particularly for rethinking peace and conflict processes from a spatial perspective and with the language of visual geopolitics. However, maps and their seductive powers can also be appropriated for the purposes of challenging dominant worldviews, addressing spatial injustices and visualising silenced perspectives. Originating in environmental and indigenous struggles, counter-mapping is increasingly being used in the context of peace and conflict. This piece explores its potential and its shortcomings by engaging with two cases: environmental legacies of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and civil resistance through mapping in Ukraine.
