Speculative and constructively critical GIS

Thatcher, Jim; Bergmann, Luke; O’Sullivan, David

doi:10.1111/cag.12441

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…The fear of perceived relevance, or lack thereof, often identified in reviews of the state of critical GIS education—questioning, for example, whether GIS students will voluntarily read social science theory or critical theory students will be amenable to GIS software—remains a concern (Elwood and Wilson 2017; Thatcher et al 2018). We have watched a few students who define themselves as pure GIS practitioners drift away, and we have seen a few social science students flounder uncomfortably with GIS and eventually choose a different path.…”

Section: After Anna: Moving Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But within a year, we again found ourselves searching for a critical GIS tenuretrack position and immersed in discussions about what teaching critical GIS meant. In retrospect, during both those searches we were reminded again and again what astute GIS observers such as Wilson (2017) and Thatcher et al (2018) all confirm: the term "critical GIS" functions as a sort of Rorschach test with highly unpredictable results. The most unpredictable for us turned out to be the dramatic differences in how candidates (and their references) approached conceptualizing a critical GIS curriculum, and how our own faculty interpreted its possibilities and challenges.…”

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confidence: 94%

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For Anna: After critical GIS, what next?

Warren

Sauders

Dvořák

2020

Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes

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• We present a tribute to our late colleague Anna Dvorak, featuring elements of her last (unfinished) manuscript. • We incorporate an examination of critical GIS education in the age of corporate story-telling. • A case study of Anna's engagement in environmental justice illustrates GIS advocacy through critical GIS education. In honour of our lost colleague Anna K. Dvorak, we draw from elements of her last unfinished manuscript to explore new directions in critical GIS education and practice. Anna was a recent PhD in Geography hired into a critical GIS tenure-track position. The ways in which she wove GIS practice through her research interests, teaching sensibilities, and community advocacy experiences defied easy categorization; we argue she represents a new generation of geography graduate student who is redefining where and how critical GIS education occurs. Anna's social and environmental justice work with the Pacoima Beautiful non-profit organization in southern California formed the basis for an ongoing research initiative that gave her the opportunity to experiment with GIS as advocacy tool in the hands of local high school students. At the time of her death she had completed an initial draft of a manuscript situating this work in broader community activism issues. We remember Anna by presenting large sections of her work unaltered, interwoven with our commentary on the significance of her approach to critical GIS in a time of shifting academic and corporate commercial relationships to the technology.

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Section: After Anna: Moving Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 94%

For Anna: After critical GIS, what next?

Warren

Sauders

Dvořák

2020

Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes

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“…Instead, we posit that these new technologies could usefully catalyze a more comprehensive reanchoring of computational geography to the theoretical foundations of our discipline, in line with the calls for critical quantitative geography made in the past decade (Kwan and Schwanen 2009;Wyly 2011). In the recent discourse around critical GIS (O'Sullivan, Thatcher, Bergmann, and O'Sullivan 2018) we find several contributions arguing for a re-imagining of GIS (Gahegan 2018) and an opening up to different spatial ontologies (Bergmann and O'Sullivan 2018). Likewise, the field of geocomputation (Cheng, Haworth, and Manley 2012) brings together geography and computer science and, in Gahegan's (1999) reading, is specifically meant to alleviate the 'shortcomings' of GIS.…”

Section: Experimenting With Graph Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Being Smarter about Space: Drawing Lessons from Spatial Science

Poorthuis

Zook

2019

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

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Smart technology -in its many facets -is often critiqued within Geography in ways that parallel the critiques of quantitative geography in the 1960s and GIScience in the 1990s. In this way, both the development on 'smart' technology itself and its criticisms are the latest chapter in a long-standing disciplinary debate around quantification and technology. We re-evaluate this history and argue that quantitative methodology and its theoretical critiques are not as incompatible as often claimed.To illustrate how we might address this apparent tension between theory and quantitative methods we review how both approaches conceptualize one of Geography's core concepts: space, and highlight opportunities for symbiosis. Although smart technologies can further orthodox positivist approaches, we argue that the actual practice is more nuanced and not necessarily absolute or totalizing. For example, recent computational work builds upon critical geographic theories to analyze and visualize topological and relational spaces, relevant to topics such as gentrification and segregation. The result is not a Geography in which smart technology and algorithms remove the need for human input but rather a rejoinder in line with the recent resurgence of a critical quantitative geography. In short, a Geography where social theory and the human intellect play a key role in guiding computational approaches to analyze the largest, most versatile and relevant datasets on social space that we have ever had.

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“… 10. See two recent special issues on the topic of critical approaches to GIS, software and data, in The Canadian Geographer , ACME , and Computational Culture (Thatcher et al, 2018; Burns and Lally, 2017), as well as a 2019 workshop called Doing Critical GIS organized in Baltimore by Dillon Mahmoudi and Taylor Shelton, available at: https://doingcriticalgis.umbc.edu/program/.…”

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confidence: 99%

GIScience I: Social histories and disciplinary crucibles

Wilson

2020

Progress in Human Geography

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In this first report, I overview research on storytelling of the histories of GIS. I suggest that these efforts reveal important pathways for thinking the current moment and conditioning technoscience futures. I argue that these stories around technology illustrate various disciplinary crucibles around technical practices and knowledge work. To report on progress in GIScience is also to narrate the moments of change in the discipline, whether marked as quantitative, qualitative, radical, critical, black, feminist, Marxist, indigenous, environmental, postcolonial, queer, or minor, among others. I suggest ‘minor GISciences’ to encourage attentiveness to the historical conditions and social implications of geographic technologies.

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Speculative and constructively critical GIS

Cited by 7 publications

References 25 publications

For Anna: After critical GIS, what next?

For Anna: After critical GIS, what next?

Being Smarter about Space: Drawing Lessons from Spatial Science

GIScience I: Social histories and disciplinary crucibles

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