GIS, Cartography, and Geography: The View From the Other Side

Abstract

162 APCG YEARBOOK • VOLUME 60 • 1998 GIS, Cartography, and Geography: The View From the Other Side S t a c y W a r r e n Eastern Washington University I n RECENT YEARS, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has become one of the most intellectually stimulating topics of geographic discussion. Traditional concern over its method and application has broadened to include critical evaluation of its role in geography and, more broadly, in society. The extremes of debate make for entertain­ ing reading, from Openshaw’s (1991) claim that GIS will put our contemporary Humpty Dumpty-like fractured geography back to­ gether again, to Smith’s (1992) accusation that GIS was responsible for the deaths of 200,000 Iraqis during Desert Storm. Almost every­ one has an opinion about GIS, in spite of the fact that many have never actually used it. The debate has polarized into defenders (characterized, some­ what unfairly, as representing positivist epistemologies) and critics (characterized, also somewhat unfairly, as representing postmodernist social theories). By the early 1990s, the divisions were well recog­ nized and the National Center for Geographic Information Analysis (NCGIA) initiated efforts to open dialogue between the two sides with organizations such as the Friday Harbor meetings and, more recently, Initiative 19. The 1997 APCG plenary session panel is the latest manifestation of the desire to build comprehensive understand­ ing, bringing together GIS luminary Michael Goodchild, social theory luminary Nick Entrikin, and me. Not yet being an established luminary of anything, at least not to my knowledge, I was curious as to what I could offer to this panel. As I sat in the conference room at Spokane’s Ridpath Hotel listening to Goodchild and Entrikin speak, it occurred to me that my presence on the panel represented the view from the other side, or, more accurately, from many other sides simultaneously. Goodchild President’s Plenary Session: GIS and Geography 163 and Entrikin hail from large, powerful universities; their geography programs are heralded internationally. My university, Eastern Wash­ ington University—though a vibrant and exciting place in its own right—is a regional comprehensive university with a small under­ graduate geography program. My experiences as the facilitator of our GIS program strongly suggest to me that geographers outside of the Santa Barbaras and UCLAs face a different set of issues regard­ ing implementation and teaching of the subject. Further, the other two participants fit neatly into one side of the GIS debate or the other; I, on the other hand, am situated somewhere in between. I have been exposed to too much social theory to take GIS at face value, yet I have done too much hands-on GIS to take the GIS critiques at face value either. Finally, on both sides of the debate there is a sense of rapid evolution, whether technological or epistemological. Geo­ graphic activities previously central to the discipline become recast as antiquated traditions, perhaps relegated to a section in History and Philosophy of Geography courses. In this essay, I want to try to re­ cast the emergence of GIS in the context of institutional change, and examine how GIS’s impact on the discipline builds on a mundane, everyday basis. Thus, from my “view from the other side,” I hope I can offer observations that will help bridge the gaps. The result of the panel and the discussion that followed it was an invigorating re-examination of not just the state of GIS but also the state of GIS criticism and the role of geographers in GIS’s evolution. In this paper, I present and expand on some of the ideas crystallized at the conference. I write in the first person, seeking to draw the reader into the environment fostered at the session. I address three major themes: GIS and its critics; GIS as an institutional activity; and the broader emergence of what, borrowing from Donna Haraway, I term “cyborg geography.” I begin by situating GIS within the ev­ eryday, to make a fundamental introductory point: GIS, like all technology, is socially constructed and its impact is played out in the lives of real people, living in real places. 164 APCG YEARBOOK • VOLUME 60 • 1998 GIS and Everyday Life...