Affective maps of Hadrut: On methodology
Keywords:
affective map, Hadrut, place-memory, displacement, loss, Nagorno-KarabakhAbstract
The article discusses the use of affective mapping as a method for studying memory, loss, and spatial imagination among displaced residents of the Hadrut district of Nagorno-Karabakh after the 2020 war. Conducted in Yerevan and Stepanakert in 2022, the study focuses not on analyzing interview data but on understanding the act of drawing as a form of remembering.Participants were invited to draw “their own Hadrut” - a subjective and emotionally charged image rather than a geographically precise one. The drawings were accompanied by storytelling, where the past intertwined with the present moment of narration and moving back and forth. This process revealed how bodily and emotional memories re-emerge through action, turning recollection into an embodied event.We conceptualize these maps as idiospaces - personal topographies of memory analogous to idiolects in language. Each map conveys an individual mode of belonging and a way to re-experience and rearticulate connection to a place that no longer exists materially. Affective mapping thus enables the reconstruction of the emotional geography of everyday life before displacement and illuminates how gesture, narration, and shared empathy shape social memory. As a humanistic and anthropological practice, affective cartography becomes a space where personal remembrance is transformed into a collective act of imaginative return and re-inhabitation of home.Downloads
References
Бергер, П., Лукман, Т. (1995). Социальное конструирование реальности. Трактат по социологии знания. М.: Медиум.
Веселкова, Н. В. (2010). Ментальные карты города: вопросы методологии и практики использования. Социология: методология, методы, математическое моделирование (Социология: 4М), 2010(31), 2-29.
Веселкова, Н. В., Прямикова, Е. В., Вандышев, М. Н. (2022). Исследовательский фотомэппинг: обсуждение метода. Мониторинг общественного мнения: экономические и социальные перемены, 2022(4), 39-61. https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring
Линч, К. (1982). Образ города. М.: Стройиздат.
Стрельникова, А. В. (2012). Метод биографической прогулки: интервью в пространственном измерении. В А. Б. Гофман, Г. В. Градосельская и др. (Ред.). Сборник статей VI научно-практической конференции "Современная социология - современной России", 665-671. М.: Издательский дом НИУ ВШЭ.
Шахназарян, Н., Хачатурова, А., Никифорова, Е. (2022). Антропология утраченных мест: ментальные/концептуальные карты Гадрута. Аналитикон, август 2022. Режим доступа: https://theanalyticon.com/ru/avgust-2022
Buhr, F. (2021). Migrants' mental maps: Unpacking inhabitants' practical knowledges in Lisbon (Chap. 3). In K. Nikielska-Sekula, A. Desille (Eds.). Visual Methodology in Migration Studies, 51-65. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67608-7_3
Campos-Delgado, A. (2017). A picture is worth a thousand words: Irregular transmigrants' journeys and mental mapping methodology. International Migration, 55(6), 184-199. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12369
Creet, J. (2011). The migration of memory: Intimate cartographies. In J. Creet, A. Kitzmann (Eds.). Memory and migration: Multidisciplinary approaches to memory studie, 3-26. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Derrida, J. (1994). The specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning and the new international. New York, London: Routledge.
Gieseking, J. J. (2013). Where we go from here: The mental sketch mapping method and its analytic components. Qualitative Inquiry, 19(9), 712-724.
Gould, P., White, R. (1986). Mental maps. New York, London: Routledge.
James, W. (1912). Essays in radical empiricism. Project Gutenberg. (2010 eBook edition).
Jodelet, D., Milgram, S. (1976). Psychological maps of Paris. In H. M. Proshansky, L. V. Rivlin (Eds.). Environmental psychology: People and their physical settings, 104-124. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Jung, H. (2012). Let their voices be seen: Exploring mental mapping as a feminist visual methodology for the study of migrant women. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38(3), 985-1002.
Kaisto, V., Brednikova, O. (2019). Lakes, presidents and shopping on mental maps: Children's perceptions of the Finnish-Russian border and the borderland. Fennia, 197(1). https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.73208
Karapetyan, E., Amiryan, T. (2021). Shushi: Mental maps. Yerevan: CSN Lab.
Khachaturova, A. (2025). An anthropology of loss: Exploring the spectral maps of the displaced Armenians from Hadrut, Nagorno-Karabakh. Ethnopolitics, 2025, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2025.2568282
Low, S. (2017). Spatializing culture: The ethnography of space and place. London, New York: Routledge.
Malkki, L. (1995). Refugees and exile: From "refugee studies" to the national order of things. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24(1995), 495-523. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.002431
Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions). Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smvr
Massumi, B. (2015). The politics of affect. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Mekdjian, S. (2015). Mapping mobile borders: Critical cartographies of borders based on migration experiences. In A.-L. Amilhat Szary, F. Giraut (Eds.). Borderities and the politics of contemporary mobile borders, 204-224. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mekdjian, S., Olmedo, E. (2016). Médier les récits de vie: Expérimentations de cartographies narratives et sensibles. M@ppemonde.
Pezzoni, N. (2013). La città sradicata. Geografie dell'abitare contemporaneo: i migranti mappano Milano. Obarrao Edizioni.
Pezzoni, N. (2016). The up-rooted city: Migrants mapping Milan. In G. Marconi, E. Ostanel (Eds.). The intercultural city: Migration, minorities and the management of diversity, 89-108. London: I.B. Tauris.
Psarras, B. (2025). City as a poetic database through walking, new media and site interventions: Performing and transforming urban otherness. In H. Pires, Z. Pinto-Coelho, L. Magalhães (Eds.). Communicating human and non-human otherness, 145-161. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Reavey, P. (2017). Scenic memory: Experience through time-space. Memory Studies, 10(2), 107-111. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698016683844
Silva, A. V., Fonseca, M. L. (2018). Mapas mentais e espaços vividos: Imigrantes brasileiros na cidade de Los Angeles. In S. Siqueira (Ed.). Ligações migratórias contemporâneas: Brasil, Estados Unidos e Portugal, 101-133. Ed. Univale.
Spinoza, B. (1954). Ethics. New York: Dover Publications.
Till, K. E. (2012). Wounded cities: Memory-work and a place-based ethics of care. Political Geography, 31(1), 3-14.
Wood, E. (2003). Insurgent collective action and civil war in El Salvador. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
How to Cite
Коды статьи
- EDN MUGDVC
- Тип статьи (РИНЦ) Научная статья (Научная статья)
