Initiative 19: GIS and Society: The Social Implications of How People, Space, and Environment are Represented in GIS (began February 1996). The initiative focuses attention on the social contexts of GIS production and use and addresses a series of conceptual issues:

• In what ways have particular logic and visualization techniques, value systems, forms of reasoning, and ways of understanding the world been incorporated into existing GIS techniques, and in what ways have alternative forms of representation been filtered out?



• How has the proliferation and dissemination of databases associated with GIS, as well as differentiatial access to spatial databases, influenced the ability of different social groups to utilize information for their own empowerment?


• How can the knowledge, needs, desires, and hopes of marginalized social groups be adequately represented in GIS-based decision-making processes?



• What possibilities and limitations are associated with using GIS as a participatory tool for more democratic resolution of social and environmental conflicts?



• What ethical and regulatory issues are raised in the context of GIS and Society research and debate?

The initiative is led by Trevor Harris and Daniel Weiner, West Virginia University.

The Initiative 19 specialist meeting was held at the Koinonia Retreat Center, South Haven, Minnesota, March 2-5, 1996. The meeting was organized as a workshop. A call for position papers was emailed to numerous bulletin boards and posted in the AAG newsletter. In response, over 40 position papersand expressions of interest were received. After a peer review process, 32 position papers were accepted and invitations to attend were offered. Attendees were geographically distributed throughout the United States and representatives from the United Kingdom and Switzerland were also present. All position papers are posted to an Initiative 19 Page on the World Wide Web.

Based upon subsequent feedback and the post-meeting initiatives which it spawned, the specialist meeting should be considered a success. A plenary session provided the history of the initiative, identified the conceptual framework of the I-19 proposal, and laid out the initial research themes. Subsequent plenary sessions addressed each of the conceptual issues in the proposal which were then followed by smallerbreak-out groups which later reported back to the whole group. Toward the end of the workshop, specific research topics were identified and break-out groups were formed to establish forums for discussion. Clusters of individuals interested in developing specific research projects were then established. Subsequent to the specialist meeting, four I-19 research proposals were submitted to the NCGIA.

The specialist meeting successfully discussed and challenged our early conceptual ideas and research themes. This has acted to refine and focus them still further. The four research proposals all seek to provide vehicles suitable for pursuing the conceptual issues laid down in the proposal and elaborated at the specialist meeting (see list below). At the specialist meeting, there was also considerable discussion regarding the possibility of developing what became know as "GIS2". Although multiple meanings of GIS2 were presented and discussed, the core of this idea is an alternative GIS constructed with community participation and incorporating non-conventional knowledge types. One of the key objectives of GIS2 is to facilitate more inclusive spatial decision-making processes. Other key issues to emerge from the specialist meeting are discussed in the specialist meeting report (Technical Report 96-7).

The steering committee also organized two I-19 sessions at the Association of American Geographers annual conference held in Charlotte, NC in April, 1996. The first session comprised a "meet the editors" discussion in which Eric Sheppard and John Pickles provided an overview and responded to "critics" and questions regarding the GIS and Society theme volume published by CAGIS, and the edited volume Ground Truth. The second session comprised several short presentations by members of the I-19 steering committee which focused on the objectives, conceptual themes, and research projects of I-19. Both sessions were well attended and generated substantial discussion and interest.

These conceptual issues are addressed in the context of three research themes:

• the administration and control of populations
• location conflict involving disadvantaged populations
• the political ecology of natural resource access and use

Much of the effort expended in the first six months of the year was focused on the specialist meeting and the AAG presentations. Out of these activities have come four research proposals which have been submitted to NCGIA and accepted for funding. These comprise:

• A regional and community GIS-based risk analysis [University of Minnesota]



• GIS and Society: research in the Kanawha Valley, West Virginia [West Virginia University, University of Kentucky]



• The social history of GIS project [SUNY-Buffalo, University of Kentucky]



• The ethics of spatio-visual representation: toward a new mode [University of California - Los Angeles, University of Minnesota]