The Social History of GIS

List of Coordinators and Participants

Overview

The central goals of this work, also known as the CHGIS (Critical History of GIS) project, are to bring a variety of theoretical perspectives from contemporary social theory to bear on the question of GIS as social practice, to contextualize GIS in its social, political, and economic context (in contrast to more traditional internalist and hagiographic histories), to locate GIS in terms of a broader history of science and technology, andspecifically to do so through an engagement with the systems and logics that were developed, the paths that were not taken (but could have been), and the institutional linkages that provided the context within which that which emerged came to be. The CHGIS Group began its work in spring 1996 directly following the I-l9 meeting at Koinonia in Minnesota, and submitted a proposal to the NCGIA for seed money. Funding to support the activities of the group was committed in late spring, and Eugene McCann was hired at the University of Kentucky as research assistant to the project for one semester and began work in late August.

The first efforts of the Group were devoted to extensive email discussion of the specific structure and content of the research that might be carried out through this project, and to building a strong group of research participants. The participants are: Jon Goss (Hawaii), David Mark (Buffalo), John Pickles (Kentucky) (Coordinators), and, Nick Chrisman (Washington), Michael Curry (UCLA), Oliver Froehling (Kentucky), Carol Hall (South Carolina), Ken Hillis (Wisconsin/Colorado), Patrick McHaffie (DePaul), Roger Miller(Minnesota), Eric Sheppard (Minnesota), Jon Taylor (Kentucky), and Dalia Varanka (BLM/Wisconsin-Milwaukee). A private listserver called CHGIS was established at Kentucky and is managed by McCann and Pickles. CHGIS continues to be an active and useful venue for linking the research group and enabling its research.

The second task of the research group was the archiving of papers dealing with the history of GIS as background to defining specific questions and tasks for the team. McCann has worked to build this archive and has compiled a bibliography of contents for the research team, and the resultant selected reading list was supplied to all team members. This material provided the background reading for a workshop in Santa Barbara in September 1996. That workshop, held at Santa Barbara's Upham hotel, was attended by Curry, Goss, Mark, McHaffie, Miller, Pickles, and Varanka. The workshop included detailed discussions on the nature of the project, plans for establishing a formal archive for the History of GIS (to be located at the Library of Congress or the American Geographical Society), careful specification of research questions and tasks, and a workshop on research methods.

Ancillary activities related to this work are Mark and McHaffie's participation in the November GIS/LIS Conference, Pickles' short lecture course on GIS and Society, given to the Finnish National Post-Graduate Seminar the University of Turku, Nov. 6-7, 1996, and preparation of Pickles' manuscript on the history of I-l9 for the forthcoming book edited by Longley, Goodchild, Maguire, and Rhind.

The CHGIS group outlined a series of central issues that guided its work, a set of specific questions that individuals seek to answer in their own work, and a plan of research topics to be undertaken over the next three years.

CHGIS project

Introduction

At the heart of the research we propose are questions related to the I-19 proposal. First, how have particular logics, technological developments, visualization techniques, ways of knowing, and forms of reasoning entered into contemporary GIS; how they have come to function in specific institutional and practical settings; how certain possible pathways were taken; and what alternatives were available that for one reason or another were not taken (conceptual issue 1)? Second, in what ways have particular systems and uses of GIS resulted in differential levels of access to information. Specifically, we will address the need for “an historical analysis of the ways in which GIS have developed and diffused (who funded development, what options were considered and rejected, what institutional and intellectual linkages were forged in the development of GIS, etc.) and empirical analysis of contemporary patterns of production, marketing, and use” (conceptual issue 2 p.7). The project also deals with the institutional settings within which GIS is practiced and asks to what ends is GIS put, and what notions of access, representation, and use underpin these practices

The Social History of GIS Group begins its analysis with a simple conceptual distinction which is important for the way in which our research agenda is framed. This is between, on the one hand, those GIS which, because of logics adopted, ways of knowing accepted and rejected, technologies developed and used, and institutions built, function in a way that homogenizes the world and reduces it to a set of particular logics and representations - the homogenizing influence of GIS. On the other hand, GIS displays a great deal of internal variability in its application in particular geographic and social settings. This variability should not be overlooked or denied. The variability-in-use points to important possibilities that we need to recognize within I-19. We call this the internal variability of GIS and the geographical variability of GIS practice.

Research Issues

It is our task in this group to focus on the ‘ways of knowing’ that have come to characterize GIS practice, and to try to identify the ways in which certain roads were taken and not taken. The I-19 Specialty Meeting Working Group on the Social History of GIS identified three project areas as part of a critical social history of GIS on which we felt work was needed. This proposal outlines these three project areas, and specifies one for immediate funding support.

1. Precursors and preconditions for the development of GIS.

The intellectual and technological ‘prehistory’ of GIS; how GIS fits into the post-Enlightenment project; premodern and early forms of GIS. These issues require a ‘deep history’ of how systems of representing geographic information developed, such as metrication, land surveys, military surveillance, and mapping expeditions. That is, what were the precursors and ways of understanding the world that provided the conditions of possibility for GIS to emerge in the forms that did?

2. Applications of GIS in different cultural and political economic contexts.

As noted above, GIS is not a single, homogenous set of technologies and practices. There is enormous internal variation within the rubric captured by “GIS”, and there are important differences in the ways in which GIS functions as a social practice. That is, there is a sociology, political economy, and geography of GIS development and use. In this part of the research we propose to study some of the ways in which different geographical, institutional, and social settings have produced different types of GIS theory and practice.

3. The development of contemporary GIS systems.

One important way in which we will be able to investigate how contemporary GIS came to be the way they are is through an ethnographic analysis of contemporary developers and uses. Whether and how did different institutional and individual interests involved in the development of the technology lead to particular innovations and affected their subsequent development? How a community of theoreticians and practitioners developed to promote a particular version of the technology? Three “sites” seem to be particularly important in this regard:

a. Key institutions: which institutions provided an intellectual and material context for the development of GIS and how did their interests, operations, and ‘ways of life’ affect the development of technology?

b. Key processes/events: where were the main critical theoretical and technological turning points in the development of GIS technologies, how did these occur, and how did they affect further development.

c. Key individuals: who were the main actors in GIS and how did their personal experiences, motivations and decisions affect the evolution of the technology and its institutionalization?


Research Design

We propose to carry out a series of in-depth interviews with individuals whose work defines particular aspects of GIS as social practice. The sites for study will be:

Each ‘site’ will be investigated by a team of researchers combining GIS experts and social theorists. Research methodologies will involve literature reviews, archival research, and in-depth interviews. Interviews will be carried out to provide a common database (transcripts will be distributed to the research team and others through the WWW), and individual researchers will use these common “data sources” for their individual analysis. Individual team members will write individual and/or co-authored research papers focusing on questions specific to their own interests and expertise. Topics identified for study include (but are not restricted to):


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