Maps and Symbolic Power: Cartographic Discourse and the Rise of Spy Hysteria in the Russian Empire on the Eve of World War I
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The conception of maps has undergone major transformations over the past 30-odd years. Various theoretical trends have made significant alterations to the understanding of maps, such that cartographic images are no longer considered to be “mirrors of nature,” which reflect reality in a dispassionate manner. However, the dominant contemporary critical approaches to map interpretation also have their own flaws. The pivotal one is the thesis that a map, as such, has great magical power that can transform social reality. This rather naïve perception, in many ways similar to pre-modern magical reasoning about imagery, prevents an appropriate understanding of the ways in which maps work and the sources from which they derive their performative power. The concept of symbolic power developed by Pierre Bourdieu clarifies these questions. This article uses a case study of Map No. 45, created by the Kiev Military District of the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I, to show how Bourdieu’s method works with specific material, highlighting the relation between performative cartographic images and the structural positions of the actors involved in the social game with maps, as well as the political and bureaucratic fields, and preceding and succeeding performative statements. The case taken for analysis illustrates how vague, constantly disputed cartographic images, accompanied by absurd, aggressive discourses, under certain circumstances contribute to the appearance of legal acts (first-order performatives) that lead to catastrophic social consequences. At the same time, the history of Map No. 45 demonstrates the fragility of social magic and its non-cartographic origin.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.045 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".