The Utopian Potential of GIS

Abstract

Lively debate has surrounded the emergence of geographic information systems (gis) as a formidable presence in both intellectual and applied geographic circles. Earlier discourses that polarized gis into two mutually exclusive camps — neutral, objective tool vs. positivist, theoretically corrupt weapon — have more recently been tempered through the infusion of conceptual vantage points such as feminist theory and theories of science as socially constructed practice. The widening array of uses to which gis is now put, including everything from missile sitings and gerrymandering to movements for social and environmental justice, make it even more imperative to situate gis inquiry within broader frameworks that can encompass the richly contradictory cultural, political, and economic landscapes of technology. In this paper, I home in on a case study of a local, fledgling public participation gis (ppgis) effort in order to understand gis as part of the longer trajectory of people's struggles with and against the machine within industrial capitalism. Specifically, I draw from utopian studies to propose that gis can be seen as a contemporary manifestation of the utopian impulse, where technology is both the problem and, when inserted into more emancipatory social settings, the potential cure. The loosely organized collection of people working locally to use gis, in small and often disconnected ways, to interfere in the fabric of industrial (and post-industrial) capitalism in fact represents a utopian undertaking to confront geographically specific problems and create the "better life in the better place."