Platform critical toponymy: A reflexive extension of Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice for 21st-Century Critical Toponymy
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Toponyms are not passive labels. They are arenas where spatial inscription, social memory, and distributive struggle converge. Although existing critical toponymy offers profound insights, it is being unsettled by a new historical condition: the platformization of place naming. This article proposes platform critical toponymy, a new paradigm of critical toponymy grounded in a reflexive extension of Bourdieu's theory of practice. By introducing three recursive mechanisms—platformization, datafication, and algorithmic governance—it reconstructs the field-capital-habitus triad to analyze how digital platform infrastructures reorganize the conditions under which toponyms are assigned, remembered, contested, and governed, and to advance data sovereignty, algorithmic accountability, and the democratization of naming rights. This paper (a) traces how critical toponymy expanded from colonial naming and identity recovery to heritage commodification and digital inscription, exposing the field's persistent urban normativity and Global North bias; (b) reconceives the field as a multi-scalar ecology in which state standardization, platform ranking, corporate branding, and local inscription overlap rather than simply oppose one another; (c) treats naming capital as a convertible and auditable asset composed of institutional, economic, cultural, social, and platform-symbolic forms, and clarifies the conditions under which such conversion is legitimized, contested, or blocked; and (d) reconceptualizes habitus as an evolving, politically and technologically mediated disposition shaped by official, commercial, community, platform-mediated, and academic rationalities. The paradigm is tested through four cross-contextually comparable cases. The article concludes by proposing that future research take data sovereignty, algorithmic accountability, participatory mapping, and the democratization of naming rights as its core concerns.
Source: Research Square
Author: Xiaomei Ji
Institution: Nanchang University
Language: English
Topic: Spatial and Cultural Studies
Subfield: Geography, Planning and Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225395094