Qualitative GIS: A Mixed Methods Approach

Abstract

Qualitative GIS: A Mixed Methods Approach Meghan Cope and Sarah Elwood (Editors) Sage Publications, Los Angeles, CA, 2009 x + 182 Pp. $64.00 Paperback Reviewed by Rudo KemperQualitative GIS - isn't that kind of an oxymoron? This comment from a colleague with years of experi- ence working with GIS echoes the title of an edito- rial from an edition of Environment and Planning dedicated to the topic (Kwan and Knigge: 2006), and voices lingering concerns about the limitations of GIS. Qualitative GIS: A Mixed Methods Approach serves as an invitation to scholars in fields like cultural anthropology and human geography to take seriously how GIS can serve as a productive and genuinely qualitative research framework, unshackled from the rigid, Cartesian understandings of space that con- temporary scholarship with a qualitative orientation tends to reject. From the very first sentence, the edi- tors, both with longstanding and extensive academic engagements with GIS, anticipate the resistance that scholars might have to the idea of qualitative GIS. Indeed, the text very much reads as a response to the understanding that GIS is an inherently quantitative research framework. A significant part of this rebut- tal targets the well-known critiques of GIS from the mid-1990s, which depicted GIS as being rooted in positivism and therefore mostly, if not exclusively, suited for quantitative spatial techniques which lend themselves to such a perspective. Each author aims to move beyond these critical polemics of the 1990s. They do so by thinking through the creative possibili- ties of a 'post-positivistic' GIS, capable of visualizing multiple (or partial) representations unhinged from any particular spatial epistemology.At the time this book review is being written, Quali- tative GIS is already four years old. Since the volume's publication, qualGIS methods have started to make an appearance in a number of articles and confer- ence presentations. Most of these cite Qualitative GIS as an important source, and seek to build upon the advances made by the authors contributing to the volume. For example, Boschmann and Cubbon (2013) revisit sketch maps and argue that their use to focus on spatial experiences and knowledge of interview participants achieves the postpositivist goals of qualGIS. Jones and Evans (2012) describe an innovative technique they call spatial transcripts, in which participants' spoken words are automati- cally georeferenced through GPS location tracking by means of a mobile device. This allows the location of an interviewee's comments to be recorded dynami- cally, and therefore produces a much richer, spatially referenced range of data that not only expedites the note taking process but can bring new analytical perspectives to light. Interestingly, both of these stud- ies focus on the urban landscape like much of the extant qualGIS literature, although the methods are directly applicable to research in non-urban settings. These and other recently published papers helpfully show how qualGIS can contribute an indispensible spatial dimension to existing qualitative methods like ethnography, in practice.Qualitative GIS remains the sole book about qualGIS itself, and continues to be worth reading as a wel- come meditation on the imaginative possibilities of qualGIS. On the whole, it is a concise manifesto for a counter-intuitive, yet bona fide qualitative research method. The volume achieves a fine balance between brevity and detail, and it can therefore serve as an excellent introduction to the pursuit of qualGIS for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on qualitative research methods or anthropological GIS. Although the volume is not written as a research methods guide, it could also be used as a source of ideas for researchers seeking to incorporate qualGIS approaches to supplement other qualitative method- ologies such as ethnography.The book is composed of ten chapters, two of which serve as introductory preludes to make the reader comfortable with the idea of qualitative GIS (hereafter qualGIS). …