radical geography

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radical geography

• part five critical cartography / critical GIS

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geography and the Cold War legacy

• The Second World War marked an epochal change
  in the relation of geographers to war and the
  military. The military had long utilized the
  skills of geographers, but from World War II the
  relation changed at least in the United States,
  and the military began less drawing upon existing
  geographical knowledge than directing a new kind
  that was increasingly formal, instrumental, and
  model driven.
• Mathematical modeling has left its mark on many
  disciplines, and is now a relatively unquestioned
  part of how science works. As economist Paul
  Krugman said, "To be taken seriously an idea has
  to be something you can model.
• Trevor Barnes, Geographys Underworld

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geography and the Cold War legacy

• -- classical "received view" philosophy of
  science models are superfluous they don't add
  to axioms, laws, and theories (the goal of
  science) because they possess the same deductive
  structure as the theory to which they correspond.
  "Models did not add to explanation, but were
  merely parasitic upon existing axioms, laws and
  theories.
• -- Another view says that models don't just
  describe or help explain the world, but they also
  intervene, changing it (the rational choice model
  justified Jeffrey Sachs's shock therapy for
  Russia, structural adjustment policies in the
  third world, etc.)
• -- it wasn't only the bomb that was constructed
  post WW2 / a whole assemblage was required, which
  includes not only mathematical modeling across
  the social sciences too -- "After the bomb is
  built, and even dropped, the assemblage remains.
  War continues."

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geography and the Cold War legacy

• Basically, this whole assemblage that was
  constructed during the cold war has one goal to
  beat an enemy.
• Geographers began building models that were
  directly Cold War-related (modeling a new highway
  system to get people out of Seattle if the
  Russians dropped nukes on it) and beyond (models
  to study the spatial organisation of land use,
  differences in urban rent, predict demand for
  transportation at urban sites, etc.)
• The military-industrial complex still affects
  how geography is done today

5
thinking critically / maps and power

• "Under what circumstances is a map authored?"
  (Jeremy Crampton)
• "Maps are active they actively construct
  knowledge, they exercise power and they can be a
  powerful means of promoting social change."
  (Crampton Krygier, in An Introduction to
  Critical Cartography, 2006)
• Are all maps political? Can there be such a
  thing as a neutral map?

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thinking critically / maps and power

• Check out this really long sentence by Wood
  Krygier
• In effect, the map is actually a system of
  propositions (a proposition is a statement
  affirming or denying the existence of something),
  an argument about existence and if it started
  with paddy fields and long fields and manor lands
  and with the states these made up and the world
  these states composed, or wanted to imagine,
  wanted everyone to imagine they composed, the
  map has gone on to a long career rich in the
  affirmation of the existence of a bewildering
  variety of things, some whose existence we
  continue to affirm (e.g., all the nation-states
  we have mentioned), some we have come to deny
  (the island-continent of California, the
  Northwest Passage, the open polar sea, etc.),
  but, in any case, things very hard to imagine
  without the creative intercession of the map
  (geologic strata, frontal weather systems, the
  hole in the ozone, etc.). (forthcoming article,
  2009)
• i.e., Maps dont simply describe reality, they
  create it

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thinking critically / maps and power

• Critical geographers should start from the
  premise that maps are rooted in and essential to
  power and knowledge ... with the understanding
  that mapmaking acts to codify, to legitimate,
  and to promote the world views which are
  prevalent in different periods and places
  (Harris Hazen)

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thinking critically / maps and power

• What actors, resources, or social relations
  enabled a particular map to be produced?
• What relations does a particular map enable the
  reader to see?
• Or, otherwise stated, what relations of power and
  partiality does the map itself produce?
• Applied to conservation, these insights open
  several critical avenues for exploration.
• For instance, how does mapping suggest that
  certain spaces can, or should, be protected for
  conservation?
• How does the relative mappability of different
  areas or landscapes encourage the protection of
  certain features over others?
• How do maps allow readers to imagine certain
  spaces as uninhabited and appropriate for
  protection, or already successfully protected?
  
• -- Hazen Harris, 2006

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thinking critically / questions
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thinking critically / questions
-- the map shows that the practice of
designating territories for conservation is
global in extent, suggesting the relevance of
analyses that consider the role of global
discourses and institutions in conservation
mappings -- the map invites evaluation of the
observable differences in percentage land area
dedicated to conservation nationally and
regionallyas expressed by differentiated color
values. For instance, the emphasis on
conservation in certain post-colonial contexts
raises questions about colonial legacies in which
contemporary conservation practices may be
embedded (see Neumann 1997). By contrast, the
degree of correspondence between conservation
territories and industrialized countries suggests
that conservation mappings may have more to do
with political or socio-economic conditions than
biodiversity requirements. In cases such as
Germany (26.9) or Switzerland (25.7) high
percentages of land protected may be more a
function of topography (e.g., mountainous areas),
economic development, or political viability to
designate land for recreation than biodiversity
needs per se.
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thinking critically / questions
While this map readily suggests certain types of
interrogations, other critical evaluations are
minimized or foreclosed. For instance, the
choice of the global scale and the focus on land
area bypasses issues related to who manages these
protected areas, and towards what ends. Further,
representing conservation spaces as percentages
of national land area says nothing about which
areas are effective, or which mappings relate to
areas of high biodiversity or species endemism.
In a more general sense, this map can be read as
endorsing the idea that conservation territories
are comparable across contextsa questionable
endeavor given the importance of geographic and
species variabilities. ...it is provocative to
imagine what other types of maps could be
produced to complement standard representations,
especially possibilities that might enable
critical readings of conservation practice,
highlight the urgency of species losses, or
otherwise more readily convey power inequalities
common to conservation practice. (all from Hazen
Harris, Counter(mapping) for Conservation)
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thinking critically / questions

• For every map we encounter, we could ask
• What does this map do?
• Who created it? Why? How?
• Who does it serve?
• Try questioning these various maps

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thinking critically / projections

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thinking critically / projections

Arno Peters thought that the Mercator projection
gave a fully false picture, particularly
regarding the non-white-peopled lands...it
over-values the white man and distorts the
picture of the world to the advantage of the
colonial masters of the time -- in the
mid-1970s he championed this Peters projection
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thinking critically / projections
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map projections

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countermapping

• If maps are a technology of power, what can
  mapmakers do to question or subvert prevailing
  assumptions?
• Countermapping is a term that implies "using
  mapping to overcome predominant power
  hierarchies, interspecies injustices, and other
  power effects." (Harris Hazen, 2006)
• That is to say mapping can be used to challenge
  the dominant order.
• We understand counter-mapping as any effort that
  fundamentally questions the assumptions or biases
  of cartographic conventions, that challenges
  predominant power effects of mapping, or that
  engages in mapping in ways that upset power
  relations. (Harris Hazen, 2006)
• For example, if fishermen are using maps in ways
  that help them overharvest fish well, one could
  also create maps that would be used to identify
  where fish should be protected, and help with
  fish conservation.

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countermapping
Countermapping is also used to help identify
indigenous boundaries...
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countermapping

• More indigenous territory has been claimed by
  maps than by guns. This assertion has its
  corollary more indigenous territory can be
  reclaimed and defended by maps than by guns.
  Whereas maps like guns must be accurate, they
  have the additional advantages that they are
  inexpensive, don't require a permit, can be
  openly carried and used, internationally
  neutralize the invader's one-sided legalistic
  claims, and can be duplicated and transmitted
  electronically which defies all borders, all
  pretexts, and all occupations. Bernard
  Nietschmann (1995)
• There are real questions about whether you can
  use the master's mapping tools to re-map the
  master's house, so-to-speak we will return to
  this a bit later

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Technology / GPS

• a global network of between 24 and 32 satellites
  that was created by the US Department of Defense.
  
• used by anyone with a GPS receiver that wants to
  obtain precise coordinates of a given location
  (airplanes, ships, military uses, civilian
  navigation, land surveying, mobile phones, etc.)
• Although it was developed as military
  technology, Reagan made it available for civilian
  use in the early 1990s.
• It used to be that the highest quality of signal
  was available just to the military, and civilian
  use was degraded, but this "Selective
  availability" was turned off in 2000, which
  increased the precision from about 100m to about
  20m.
• Future satellites will not have this "selective
  ability" quality (the military has figured out
  how to jam GPS signals to "hostile forces"
  anyway).

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Technology / GPS

• China is planning a global system called Compass
  with 35 satellites
• the EU European Space Agency is well underway
  with its civilian use GPS project called Galileo
• Russia has a kind of run-down satellite network
  called GLONASS which India is helping bring
  up-to-date.

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GPS cool or creepy?

• GPS technology has the obvious potential for
  surveillance.
• in 2001, a man sued a local car rental company in
  New Haven, CT, after it used GPS technology to
  track him, and then fined him 450 for speeding
  three times.
• While describing why "tracking every move by
  satellite" is problematic, geographer Amy Propen
  invokes Foucault's description of "Panopticism"
• In order to be exercised, this power had to be
  given the instrument of permanent, exhaustive,
  omnipresent surveillance, capable of making all
  visible, as long as it could itself remain
  invisible. It had to be like a faceless gaze that
  transformed the whole social body into a field of
  perception thousands of eyes posted everywhere,
  mobile attentions ever on the alert.
• (Foucault, 1979) (qtd. By Propen, Critical GPS
  Towards a New Politics of Location)

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Technology / GIS

• GPS data is used in geographic Information
  Systems, or GIS
• descriptive databases which are used to store /
  analyze / display spatial information in all
  kinds of ways (resource management, medical
  geography, urban planning, archaeology,
  marketing...)
• Is GIS a value-neutral technology?

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Technology / GIS

• While many define GIS/computer cartography as
  tools, we recognize that tools implies
  something which can be put away and no longer
  have consequence in ones life until they are
  needed again. These mapping systems are
  technologies, something that we may choose to
  engage with but even if we decided to turn them
  off and go about our daily routine they will
  continue to have influence over our lives (Fox et
  al., 2005b).
• Specifically, we define these technologies as a
  techno-science, a discipline where technology
  has become the embodiment of science (see
  Turnbull, 2000). These technologies modify and
  transform the worlds that are revealed through
  them, delivering apparent realities.
• Johnson, Louis, Pramano Facing the
  Future Encouraging Critical Cartographic
  Literacies in Indigenous Communities

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Technology / GIS

• It is now possible to make educated guesses
  about any households political and religious
  views, as well as its shopping preferences. ...
  Indeed, what is most disturbing about this
  surveillance system beyond the fact that it is
  largely unregulatedis that it presumes a notion
  of closure, a view wherein there is a population
  of individuals, and where it is possible to
  obtain measurable knowledge about each. It
  implies a truly closed society.
• (Amy Propen, qtg. Curry, 1995)

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Technology / GIS

• Geodemographics if you go to claritas.com/MyBest
  Segments, you can access geodemographic data for
  your zip code
• Ex. 21021 (Franklin/Eutaw)
• Bohemian Mix
• Low-rise Living
• Money Brains
• Urban Achievers
• Urban Elders

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Technology / GIS

• Bohemian Mix
• A collection of mobile urbanites, Bohemian Mix
  represents the nation's most liberal lifestyles.
  Its residents are an ethnically diverse,
  progressive mix of young singles, couples, and
  families ranging from students to professionals.
  In their funky rowhouses and apartments, Bohemian
  Mixers are the early adopters who are quick to
  check out the latest movie, nightclub, laptop,
  and microbrew.
• Social Group  Urban Uptown
• Lifestage Group  Young Achievers
• 2008 StatisticsUS Households 2,020,210 (1.76
  ) Median HH Income 54,237 
• Lifestyle Traits
• Eat at Au Bon Pain
• Buy Spanish/Latin music
• Read The Economist
• Watch soccer
• Audi A4

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Technology / GIS

• Low-rise Living
• The most economically challenged urban segment,
  Low-Rise Living is known as a transient world for
  middle age, ethnically diverse singles and single
  parents. Home values are low--about half the
  national average--and even then less than a
  quarter of residents can afford to own real
  estate. Typically, the commercial base of
  Mom-and-Pop stores is struggling and in need of a
  renaissance.
•   Social Group  Urban Cores
•   Lifestage Group  Sustaining Families
• 2008 StatisticsUS Households 1,610,086 (1.40
  )
• Median HH Income 24,331 
• Lifestyle Traits
• Shop at Rite-Aid
• Domestic travel by bus
• Read Ebony
• Watch BET
• Drive van

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Technology / GIS

• The segmentation system enables targeting based
  on virtually any purchase and media behavior.
• Purchase Behavior
• Apparel
• Appliances
• Automotive
• Communications
• Consumer Package Goods
• Financial Services
• Home Furnishings
• Media Usage
• Travel

Media Behavior Television Cable
Internet Radio Newspapers
Magazines
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technology / power to the people

• In the last few years cartography has been
  slipping from the control of the powerful elites
  that have exercised dominance over it for several
  hundred years. These elitesthe great map houses
  of the west, the state, and to a lesser extent
  academicshave been challenged by two important
  developments. First, the actual business of
  mapmaking, of collecting spatial data and mapping
  it out, is passing out of the hands of the
  experts. The ability to make a map, even a
  stunning interactive 3D map, is now available to
  anyone with a home computer and an internet
  connection. (Jeremy Crampton John Krygier)
• maps are not only made by geographical "experts"
  anymore.
• New technology has enabled vast numbers of people
  to create or collaborate in mapmaking.
• Terms for this phenomenon neogeography,
  volunteered cartographic information

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empowering uses of GIS

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empowering uses of GIS