Maps, mobility, and perspective: remarks on map use in producing an orienteering course

Orienteering presents a perspicuous setting for exploring the intersubjective and mobile methods of map use and wayfaring. We introduce an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic treatment of orienteering, with a focus on how natural features, a tree and boulder, are mapped and found. In doing so, we comment on the nature of map use and mobility, how ‘route logics’ and categorial perspectives develop, and how certainty and uncertainty are displayed when reading maps and landscapes. Drawing on video data from orienteering in Finland and the UK, we analyse the practices of those who plan and set out orienteering courses, as they navigate routes to be subsequently followed by competitors. We find that the map operates differently as a work site depending on the working conditions of its users, yet in each case the course planner’s (or map-maker’s) perspectives are topicalised as problems emerge. Natural features as wayfinding resources are encountered with less certainty than their urban counterparts, but play a critical role in the unfolding certainty and uncertainty of a route. Questioning, route repair, and comments are all occasioned by natural features, such that there are ‘appropriate’ places on a route to do these, similar to the work of conversation.