Geographical Information Systems - Term Paper Example

Geographical Information Systems Geographical Information Systems is probably the most important and influential methodological development to have occurred in geography in the past two decades, helping to unify human and physical geography and allowing geographers to map space in ways more sophisticated and more complex than dreamed of before. And yet GIS is not without its critics, who argue that it glorifies technology over theory, reducing geography to a ? whiz?vel of description that ?le visually engaging -- provides no substantive analysis. This paper defines GIS, looks at its limitations as well as its strengths, and seeks to predict what the future of GIS may be. While a definition of what constitutes GIS is central to discussing its role within geography, such a definition is in fact difficult to produce since the term is used so variably by different people, some using it to refer to a single system while others use it to designate a system of barely related subsystems (Pickles, in Pickles, 1995, p. 3). Pickles (1995) states that all geographic information systems have two central defining characteristics: They involve the use of digital electronic data and the production of electronic spatial representations (p. 3). Parker (in Castle, 1993, p. xvii) goes even further in simplifying the defining aspect of GIS as being nothing more than ?tial data handling?om which any mention of geography per se can easily be dropped. Such a bare-bones definition of GIS lends it an appearance of neutrality that is deceptive, for geographers use electronic information technology forward a variety of epistemological perspectives and research goals. Pickles (1995) summarizes the field of possible applications; it should be noted that within each of these possible applications a wide range of philosophies and motivations is possible. [GIS is} a research community that transcends disciplinary boundaries; an approach to geographical inquiry and spatial data handling; a series of technologies for collecting, manipulating, and representing spatial information; a way of thinking about spatial data; a commodified object that has monetary potential and value; and a technical tool that has strategic value (p. 3). Not only is GIS multifaceted in its technical capabilities, it is multidimensional in its social and cultural capabilities as well, allowing for new demographic tools, new forms of workplace domination, novel commodities, new ways of identifying space and nature and new ways of waging war (Pickles, in Pickles, 1995, p. 4). Perhaps the most important contribution that GIS has offered is the ability to join the physical description of space ?t one might call the cartographic aspects of geography ?h the humanistic geographical focus on the individualistic experience of place and environment. Physical geography has long had a positivistic bent stressing the importance of regularity and order and elevating impartial empirical observation. Humanistic social geography highlights individual experience and includes affective and cognitive elements of perception (Johnston, in Johnston, 1985, p. 16). The technological flexibility and sophistication of GIS allows for a meshing of these two types of mapping and this no doubt accounts for the basis of its popularity: GIS allows geographers to create maps that reproduce not only the physical features of the earth, but also the characteristics of populations living in proximity to those physical features and cognitive, psychological and social aspects of the relationships of those populations to their physical environments. However, while such capabilities sound entirely beneficial, they are not unproblematic, as geographers have discovered in using GIS over the past two decades and in trying to define its role within the discipline. Any understanding of the way that GIS has developed and may continue to develop depends not only on an understanding of GIS itself but also on an understanding of the purpose of geography as a discipline. Geographers have traditionally been interested in the physical world, the environment, and nature and in how these three relate to people. Many and perhaps even most geographers have interpreted this relationship in spatial terms; however other geographers have been more interested in perspectives that focus on understanding humansƠsense of sense, the concept of regionality, the idea of the landscape, the human creation of different types of environment and the relationship between people and their physical world (Pickles, 1985, p. 154). This latter form of geography sees space not as the primary organizational relationship but as subsidiary to humanistic relationships. The result of this internal debate is a certain intellectual tension at the heart of geography that seemed to be resolved by GIS. (Alternately it might be argued that GIS gave a legitimacy to the ambiguity long at the heart of the geographic enterprise.) If one can map both people and the world along with human relationships, then has one not fulfilled the desires of all branches of geography? To put it another way, since GIS can do all these things, how can one imagine a future for the discipline of geography that does not have GIS at its center? The answer to that lies in the recognition that GIS, like many other geographic tools before it, is both colonialist and inherently conservative in its likeliest applications (Pickles, in Pickles, 1995, p. 16). Perhaps the most radical critiques of traditional geography have come from feminist theoreticians who have insisted that the desire to capture things by looking at them is an act not at all divorced from the desire to own and have control over them. Moreover, the traditional geographic concentration on the physical, non-social elements of space has tended to diminish the importance of those parts of the world in which women do exercise some power, such as the home. Geographers have tended to stand with their backs to their own lands, ignoring the settled and the domestic, and in looking to the unknown have lost the importance of human and especially female connection to place. They have, to put it poetically, bartered a sense of place for a sense of space (Rose, 1993, p. 47). In seeking to blend human and physical social science more firmly than the two had been joined before, GIS thus initially offered to feminist geographers (as well as other radicals within the geographic camp such as Marxists) a chance to force geography away from its historically colonialist and imperial tendencies. And yet many feminist scholars argue that GIS is hopelessly compromised as a source of critical perspective precisely because it is still imbued with the masculinist ideal that to gaze upon something is to give one power over it (Rose, 1993, p. 118). GIS seems to have less of a future among the more politically radical elements of geography than among the more conservative elements. The future of GIS is dependent in some large measure on factors that lie beyond either its academic or commercial applications, for it is in many ways a product of its historical times. GIS rose to prominence in the 1980s at the same time that postmodernism was the byword in the humanities and social sciences. Two of the central tenets of postmodernism are the idea that any human creation can be interpreted as a text and that all perspectives within a text have equal authoritative value. This second element of postmodernism has been soundly criticized on the grounds that while certainly each person has the right to put forth his or her own version of a story, some peopleƳ versions seem to accord far better with empirical evidence and some people simply tell better stories. Human geography is ? interpretation and creation of texts?ites Johnston (1986, p. 76) and the future of GIS in many ways is dependent on whether people continue to be concerned about textuality, on whether scholars continue to be concerned with the authority of texts. Postmodernism is often seen to have run its course, a intellectual fad produced by a certain conjunction of academic interests, the birth of post-industrial economies, and the particular political extravagances brought on by the end of the Cold War. And yet postmodernism must be seen to be a sort of Pandoran exercise: Once let out of its box the idea that any text (including of course the cartographic endeavors of geographers) can be seen to be absolutely true can never again be believed. Therefore, the future of GIS must be in some measure dependent on how well it can square itself with whatever degree of radicalism exists concerning authority and the importance of hierarchy in the post-postmodern academy. GIS, in large measure because of the monetary costs involved, has come to be seen as a tool for those inclined to favor hierarchy which will put it at odds in any arena that maintains a strong legacy of postmodernism. The future of GIS must also be negotiated in terms of a recognition that geography is not the only way that people create a sense of place: They also do so by naming places, by applying typologies to sites, by turning places into metonyms (so that the Statue of Liberty comes to stand for the democratic traditions of America), by telling stories about how people came to a certain place (like the tales of the Pilgrims or Columbus or the great intercontinental land bridges) and by ritualized actions such as the reading of proclamations and the unfurling of flags (Curry, 1996, p. 97). It may be that GIS, with its fierce technological demands, will push geography farther away from the lay population who will investigate and interpret place with very different tools. To debate the future of GIS is in one way a moot point: Certainly it is impossible to imagine a world in which such powerful (and potentially profitable) imaging technologies are put aside. But what specific role GIS will play in geography remains very much open to question. No technology is truly neutral, despite the claims of arms manufacturers and tobacco farmers throughout the centuries; no more so is GIS. How it will be used over the twenty years is a question that cannot be answered until geographers determine the purpose of their discipline. It is a colonialist enterprise? A mercenary one? If it be so, then certainly GIS will remain central to what geographers do. But if geographers decide that geography must be a democratic practice in which all players are given equal access to create and interpret texts, then GIS will likely fade in importance, becoming a play thing of the industrial world. In looking to the future of GIS, geographers must also come to terms with the fact that by using GIS they make their discipline attractive to a wide variety of people from outside the academy, from political consultants to arms merchants to relief workers to agricultural researchers. Other disciplines ?marily those in the hard sciences ?e had to learn how to balance the often dissonant goals of academia, the market place and the political arena, but such a balance is never easily struck and geographers must decide if it is worth the trouble. It seems most likely that while some geographers will continue to embrace GIS others ?e radical or more humanistic or more inclined to believe that GIS is all smoke-and-mirrors with no underlying substance ?l turn away from it. Such a bifurcation should not be surprising, for geography has long been torn between pacifistic and belligerent camps, between a pure search for knowledge and the longing for power, between the desire to find the single true path and the recognition that all paths lead to their right destination. References Castle, G. (ed.) (1993). Profiting from a geographic information system. Fort Collins, CO: GIS World. Curry, M. (1996). The work in the world: Geographical practice and the written word. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Johnston, R.J. (1986). On human geography. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Pickles, J. (1985). Phenomenology, science and geography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pickles, J. (1995). Ground truth: The social implications of geographic information systems. New York: Guilford. Rose, G. (1993). Feminism and geography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wordcount = 1971 Read More