| Abstract: |
If the 1960s and 1970s is associated with the first use of so-called “perceptional” mental maps (Francescato and Mebane 1973; Gould 1973), the last decade, due to the new technological possibilities (social media, open global position system etc.), is predominantly devoted to crowdsourcing approaches in the collection of data focused on spatial emotions of people. Therefore, not only the individual’s orientation strategy in space have changed (since maps contain more information and information about position is available practically around the world) but also the possibilities of mapping spatial emotions (see Klettner et al. 2013; Pánek et al. 2016). Thank to this, the mapping of emotions connected to space has become an integral part of the research activities of many professional institutions.
However, we know relatively few about spatial emotions of indigenous people, who come from very different cultural environment. Although the influence of Western society through globalization process is obvious, particularly it is necessary to take into consideration the cultural origin of the individual who is influenced by cultural traditions, manifests a different relationship with the place/home, he/she is often limited in living space radius, etc. Previous researches aimed rather at reflection of perception either of home village or wider environment (e.g. Mead 1932; Hubenáková and Soukup 2012) and they could be consider as a part of field of visual cultural anthropology. In the terminological background of mental mapping it could be spoken rather about so-called “comparative” mental maps.
The aim of the presented pilot study is to map spatial emotions of natives in Papuan village Yawan. Such mapping is not possible, of course, without the base map. What is common in our cultural and geographical settings – i.e. the availability of accurate and relatively current base maps – unfortunately, the environment of community of Yawan village (located in an isolated area of Saruwaged Range on the island of New Guinea) does not provide. Therefore, in the first phase of our research, accurate maps of the village (for other purposes as well) were prepared (field research in 2015) and only after that, in the second phase of the research, the mapping of spatial emotions of pupils from local primary school was realized (field research in 2016). Survey was attended by around 20 pupils. During the following analysis of collected data, the influence of individual’s place of residence on spatial emotions was assessed, among other things, as well as the role of public areas (e.g. school, playing area, airstrip) in emotional mental maps, the impact of clan origin of individual, etc. The aggregation and the analysis of the data were managed in software ArcGIS 10.3 for Desktop using Spatial Statistics Tools. |
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