Counter-Cartographies of Trace

This volume provides a road map for a new field of transdisciplinary Traces Studies. Based on four years of collaborative, interdisciplinary research, it adopts an experimental approach to traces. In a world marked by layered forms of violence - political, economic, social, and environmental - the contributions offer a vital and timely intervention. Instead of searching for lost or silenced histories, they turn to counter-cartography: a radical practice where gaps, absences, and fragments become powerful sites of possibility. In this way, the authors seek to open space for speculation, incompleteness and the possibility of imagining: What might it be like - or feel like - to move through fractured, uncertain worlds guided by traces? How might we reimagine complex social realities and contested terrains through what remains? And what new possibilities might emerge from the act of tracing?

• First articulation of Traces Studies
• Opens fresh pathways for engaging with the legacies of violence, the climate crisis, technological change, imperial histories, and everyday practices of resistance
• Featuring contributions from academic and artistic, non-academic voices

Aimée Joyce, is a senior lecturer in social anthropology, and co-director of the Centre for Global Post-Socialisms at the University of St Andrews.

Magdalena Buchczyk, is a junior professor of social anthropology at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

Lee Douglas, is a lecturer of in social and visual anthropology and the director of the Centre for Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.