(Wo)manufacturing Meaning:
Situating Public Cartographic Labor

Patrick H. McHaffie
Department of Geography

DePaul University

E-mail:pmchaffi@wppost.depaul.edu

I have initiated a study of the cartographic labor process at a major U.S. mapping agency. While this research is not explicitly focused on the implications of a gendered labor process, it is my intent to explore as an integral component of the study the empirical and theoretical implications, as well as the embedded contradictions of the public production of cartographic representations within a male-dominant social system.

Map production, organized during the 20th century as a scientific-technical manufacturing process utilizing photomechanical and optical techniques and producing analog products, has been (and continues to be) reorganized around digital map production in the context of a public/private institutional matrix. The empirical component of the project mentioned above includes collecting the oral work histories of cartographers and managers that have been present during the period of analog-digital conversion (approximately 1970 - present) through the use of in-depth recorded interviews. My intent here is to develop a better understanding of the "professional trajectories" of individuals within a large mapping enterprise as they pass through the lens of technologically - driven restructuring. A special effort will be made to ensure that all groups represented within the agency during this transformation are included within this portion of the study. The principal concern of this research will be to construct a social history of the analog-digital transformation in a particular context that is primarily sensitive to skills, techniques, and the interactions between workers, managers, and the products of their labors.

A second area of inquiry within this study will involve the collection and analysis of summary personnel data, as well as internal and public agency documents related to technological restructuring for this agency over the past several decades. This is intended to provide a broader perspective on institutional changes that have taken place and allow the construction of an institutional context relative to the narratives mentioned above. It should also provide detailed numerical information that will shed light on the degree of "male-dominance" within this particular agency over the past few decades, and will allow an independent analysis of the efficacy of historical employment policies and practices directed toward increasing the participation of under-represented population groups such as women, African-Americans, or Hispanics.

The consequences of the transformation from analog to digital map production for cartographers and managers is not well understood. The earlier configuration within the NMP placed cartographers within narrowly defined specializations that were closely connected to the labor input needs of a largely photo-mechanical process. Following the onset of digital conversion, however, many of these highly skilled tasks (e.g. scribing, photo typesetting), became redundant or unnecessary to the new production system. In addition, the role of managers and workers in the digital production system has been transformed to meet the needs of the new technologies. Clearly the effects of recent technological change on cartographic tasks and skills are not simple or easily explained by reference to a single logic. Whether these changes (largely taking place over the last three decades) have fundamentally altered the basis for women's participation in cartography or GIS remains an open question. Women historically have participated in the production of cartographic representations only marginally (with some notable exceptions), however, in the past few decades increasing numbers of women have joined the ranks of cartographic workers, technicians, and managers. This change reflects employment gains made in other scientific-technical labor processes and may be the logical outcome of generally increasing female participation in the workforce. Since this has taken place concurrent with the reconfiguration of the labor process itself to meet the demands contingent on new technology, it will be difficult to link apparent change to causes.

Beyond the sheer numbers of women participating in the cartographic wage economy however, a deeper epistemological challenge remains. An evolving body of feminist writing has called into question the very ground upon which patriarchal or masculinist science stands, and has convincingly shown the ways that systems of thought within the natural sciences are shaped through reference to logics drawn from received notions about society, culture, the division of labor, and inquiry (e.g. Haraway 1989; 1991; Rose 1992; Deutsche 1991; Gregory 1994). Traditional science is bound to the notion of the "master subject" universally recognized as white, male, and bourgeois. Scientific practice in the natural and social sciences has engendered a "man's world" (in the sense of claims to truth which weave the intellectual fabric of patriarchy and legitimate gender-based exploitation), and the practices themselves are the product of contingent rationalization of methodologies which have produced instrumentally useful results.

In cartography and GIS, technique has become codified in a similar fashion, and the claims to truth produced are often spectacular in their utility. Yet the near-universal acceptance of the cartesian logic embodied in the map may close out other ways of knowing the world, ways forgotten or not yet discovered, and feminist cartographers are necessarily forced to embrace a gendered system of thought, practice, and representation as they participate in the world of work. There are at least two possible ways forward. First, open our conception of the strict boundaries of cartography and GIS to include the possibility of infusion from other representations not necessarily derived from cartesian models of three-dimensional space (visual art? poetry? song? political thought and speech?). Second, we should encourage the subversion of existing technique and its practice toward the production of representations of space which challenge accepted notions of society, culture, economy, work, and the everyday (an obvious example from recent disciplinary history would be time-geography and its application).

My current research holds relevance for the proposed initiative 19 principally in the first issue area of the call for participation. If explicit "logics" exist within current GIS practice they are at least in part determined, extended, or borrowed from the set of practices that evolved as cartography. So much GIS practice appears to be data dependent (imagine what the industry would look like without census data), and new digital cartographic data often spurs the development of new applications. It is crucial to understand the social relations of digital cartographic production as being the end product of centuries of contingent rationalization of scientific-industrial processes that have evolved alongside other gendered labor processes. The digital map, like the paper map before it, is inscribed with the power relations characteristic of the society which produced it - overwhelmingly reflecting the power of scientific rationalism - and the challenge will be to describe those relationships and their contingent articulation within the state. By situating the assumptions that ground cartographic technique (and its progeny GIS) within the context of gendered science and scientific-technical production systems perhaps we can open spaces for new forms of cartographic thought and practice and new ways of mapping the futures of women and men.

Refernces

Deutsche, R. 1991. Boy's Town. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space vol 9. pp. 5-30.

Gregory, D. 1994. Geographical Imaginations. Blackwell: Cambridge, Mass

Haraway, D. 1989. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. Routledge: New York.

_________. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: the Reinvention of Nature. Free Association Books: London.

Rose, G. 1993. Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Minnesota: Minneapolis.

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