Knowledgeable Deferral and Digital Maps as Anchors

How do digital maps feature in everyday life? How do people engage with digital maps and go about using them, why, and with what degree of knowledgeability? To address these questions, this chapter reads empirical data through a practice-orientated digital sociological lens. It argues that people often engage with digital maps in practical consciousness, taking them for granted as mundane resources. It highlights a process of deferral, where information presented on a map is trust without critical refection on its veracity or reliability—connected with a lack of reflexivity in selection. Rather than purposefully choosing a specific digital map, people instead defer to established ‘defaults’ within a given context, i.e., the map application pre-installed on their smartphone or embedded on a website. In short, people tend to defer to defaults when selecting digital maps—as material elements stabilised within established practice routines through repeat performance—often with little or no consideration of possible alternatives. The chapter shows how this routinised form of deferral serves to anchor wider practice complexes as well as the decisions people make about where to go, how to get there, and less tangible senses of place, senses of security, and the performance of social positions.