Participatory Mapping

Participatory mapping is a family of methods in which community members themselves create maps of their territory, resources, land use, and boundaries — sketched on the ground or paper, drawn to scale, or built in a geographic information system. Rather than the researcher mapping the community from outside, local people hold the pen, so the map encodes their own spatial knowledge, categories, and claims. The products range from rough sketch maps made in an afternoon to participatory GIS (PGIS) layers that can stand in formal land negotiations.