Assignment 02

WITCHCRAFT!

Using data classification to make cartographic propaganda

witch house

Drawing on skills you have learned so far, including data classification and symbology, best practices of map design, and critical cartography, this assignment asks you to create two different propaganda maps using the same data. The assignment breaks into roughly three parts:

By 11:59pm on Wednesday, 2/26, submit to Canvas: * Two maps, exported in png format at 300 DPI, following the instructions below * A client report for each map, about 100 words in length, submitted in docx or pdf

Preface

“The goat is loose again, William!” cries your wife from across the hall. Not again, you think. In your rush to stand up, you knock over a jar of pickled herring. The air is pierced twice: first, when the glass breaks, and then again, a moment later, when the baby—your baby, sweet Samuel—begins to wail. There will be hell to pay for that later, but you can’t busy yourself with it now. For now, you have a goat to catch.

I’ve got bad news: you are a 17th century peasant farmer. Between chasing down your shank of a goat and feuding with the neighbors (they are heretics), you barely have time to think about how much your life has really sucked lately. Your wife Katherine, teenage daughter Thomasin, preteen son Caleb, and young fraternal twins Mercy and Jonas were recently banished from a nearby settlement over a religious dispute. One day, after your newborn son Samuel suddenly disappears while under Thomasin’s care, you begin to suspect there is something dangerous lurking in the secluded woods near your farm, and …

… whoops. Sorry, I got a little mixed up. That’s the plot to Robert Eggers’ critically acclaimed 2015 film The VVitch—not instructions for this week’s assignment.

But hear me out! While this week’s assignment doesn’t deal with disappearing infants or fugitive livestock, it does deal with witches, and I will need you to occupy the headspace of a 17th century peasant while you work on it.

family

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, thousands of people were accused of being witches during a global social panic around witchcraft. Today, we know this panic as the witch trials.

There are all sorts of reasons why you might want to study witch trials. One reason, as argued by the feminist political economist Silvia Federici—and highlighted in this short podcast—is to trace the rise of capitalism through state-sanctioned reproductive discipline. In Caliban and the Witch (2004), Federici argues that the global population crises caused by imperial expansion in the 16th and 17th centuries corresponded with a deepening control over women’s reproductive labor by the capital-s State. By analyzing the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries as wars waged against women’s bodies, Federici shows us how the development of property and labor markets in early modern Europe also “demonized any form of birth-control and non-procreative sexuality” (2004:88).

Objectives

Every October, we’re reminded of the witch trials that occurred around the corner in Salem, MA—but those were small compared to the witch trials in England and early modern Scotland. In this week’s assignment, imagine you are an 18th-century 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scot 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 who has been collecting data on witchcraft accusations accross the country.

Your reputation as a cartographer precedes you such that two separate clients—Agnes and Craig—recently approached you to make two different maps. All you know is that:

<figure style="text-align:center;">
    <a href="https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:3x817744n" target="blank"></a>
    <img src="https://theonion.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Face-Old-Woman.jpg">
    <figcaption  style="padding-bottom:8px;"> 
        Agnes is <span class="key">terribly afraid</span> of witches; wants to warn her neighbors
    </figcaption>
</figure>        
<figure style="text-align:center;">
    <a href="https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:3x817734d" target="blank"></a>
    <img src="https://theonion.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Face-Old-Man.jpg">
    <figcaption style="padding-bottom:8px;">
        Craig is <span class="key">not worried</span> about witches; considers the fears overblown
    </figcaption>
</figure>

Since you’ve encoded the witchcraft accusation in csv format, it’s easy enough to display the data using ArcGIS Pro. The question is, how will you visualize it differently for each client?

Using your knowledge of cartographic best practices, data classification, and argumentation, create a pair of maps that will use the same data to tell different stories about the Scottish witch trials:

  1. Your map for Agnes 😱 should make us believe that witches are a serious problem on the rise for Scotland
  2. Your map for Craig 🤗 should calm our nerves, insisting that there’s nothing, really, to worry about

The following steps will set you on track to make these maps.

Step 1: Download ⬇️

First, download these two required datasets. These two datasets must be represented in both maps: * Accused witches in the Scottish witch trials—the original data is from is from here * Scotland’s civil parishes in 1930—unfold “Civil Parish Dataset” and download the ZIP file

While not required, these datasets may be useful for composing your base map: * Various land and water features * Shaded relief data (large dataset! - if you don’t want to download this, you could use the standard hillshade in ArcGIS Pro instead)

Note that you’ll need to unzip the civil parishes to load them into ArcGIS Pro.

Step 2: Join 🫂

You have these two pieces of data—the spatial and the descriptive—but they’re not connected yet. A table join will help you connect them.

Table joins are a critical tool in the geospatial toolkit. They combine descriptive tabular information with geospatial data based on a common field.

To create a table join:

  1. Load your two layers into an ArcGIS Pro project—that is, the civil parishes shp and the witchcraft accusations csv
  2. Open the Add Join geoprocessing tool
  3. Find a “common field,” or a field that exists in both tables that you could use to crosswalk different parishes to different counts of witchcraft accusations

If you are having trouble getting the join to take hold, consider the following: 1. Read through the ArcGIS documentation on table joins (we’ll also talk about them in greater detail next week) 2. Try starting from scratch, e.g., using a new copy of the spreadsheet or the spatial data 3. Make sure that the count field in the csv file is being interpreted as a Number type. You may have to open the csv data in Microsoft Excel to do this 4. Try saving the csv in another format, like xls

Step 3: Classify ♻️

When the join takes hold, you will be able to apply symbology for civil parishes of Scotland based on the count field from the witchcraft csv.

This is a chance for you to experiment with different kinds of classification methods. Which classification methods could you use to more effectively get your argument across, depending on your audience?

Step 4: Design 🎨

Use your newfound knowledge of best principles in map design to create two maps that meet the requirements identified below.

Don’t forget to write a paragraph-length (no more than 100 words) “client report” for each map you make. The report should be addressed to the client—e.g., either Agnes or Craig—and it should clarify:

  1. How your design choices (e.g., title, color) help bolster the map’s argument
  2. How your classification choices (e.g., graduated vs. categorical representation, jenks vs. equal interval) help bolster the map’s argument

Requirements

Things your maps must include

The following items are required for both maps you submit: * A homemade basemap (for this assignment, you may not use a standard ArcGIS Pro basemap) * A title * A legend * Some sort of inset map * Accused witches by parish, represented appropriately for the message * Some kind of “propogandistic” accompanying text * Labels, where appropriate

Optionally, you could include things like: * a scale bar and/or a north arrow * archival objects about the Scottish witch trials (HathiTrust and Internet Archive are good places to start)

Things I’ll dock you points for

  • Inappropriate projections
  • Parishes with “no data” use the same symbology as areas with 0 values
  • Including a pre-made basemap
  • “Data speak” in your legend—e.g., titles like accused_witches_scotland

Things you should consider when making your map

  • How to use color to convey meaning
  • What kind of font and font placements are useful for getting your message across
  • How you can use scale to bolster your argument
  • Which classification schemes will help get your points across

Examples

Before you start working on this assignment, check out this pair of maps that Daniel Huffman created for the Leventhal Map & Education Center (LMEC):

<figure>
    <a href="https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:3x817744n" target="blank"></a>
    <img src="https://iiif.digitalcommonwealth.org/iiif/2/commonwealth:s4657c413/full/full/0/default.jpg">
</figure>        
<figure>
    <a href="https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:3x817734d" target="blank"></a>
    <img src="https://iiif.digitalcommonwealth.org/iiif/2/commonwealth:3x8177423/full/full/0/default.jpg">
</figure>

Using the same exact datasets of free wi-fi locations and household internet subscription rates in Boston, Daniel makes two opposite arguments.

I highly encourage you to look through these additional examples of similar maps from the Leventhal Map & Education Center. Also, Cornell has an amazing collection of “persuasive maps” in the P.J. Mode Collection, which may provide sources of inspiration.

You should feel empowered to borrow liberally from the styles, techniques, and tropes that these mapmakers used. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (though imitation should not be confused with plagiarism).

Submit

Submit the assignment via Canvas by 11:59pm on Wednesday, February 26. Your maps should be uploaded at 300 DPI in png format.

Submit