Abstract. This paper discusses the need for a deeper critical interrogation of participatory mapping (PM) method as a tool for social justice. This stance is informed by the author's involvement in a NGO and community-led PM project in an informal settlement in Khayelitsha (Cape Town, South Africa). The paper argues that academic PM literature is ill-equipped to truly examine its potential for social justice. Firstly, this is due to the PM empowerment framework having shifted from an emancipatory aim to a governing tool. Secondly, this shift does not allow for the consideration of the power relations inherent to PM to be engaged with. This paper concludes by engaging the three epistemological and postcolonial roots of PM in order to provide a starting point for (re)centering PM on social justice.

This article brings evidence-based insights to support the importance of considering contextual elements when analyzing modalities of GIS implementation within NGOs and community-based organizations. I discuss challenges and unforeseen insights of GIS implementation within an advocacy NGO that supports community claims in an informal settlement of Cape Town’s metropolitan area. Through the lens of empirical data, limitations of the GIS implementation models framework are highlighted. GIS implementation will appear to be “acupunctural” and highly strategic and will unveil the use of GIS-based solutions as relational leverage. Finally, I discuss directions for further scientific research on GIS implementation within NGOs and community-based organizations.

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