| <-- | 1. INTRODUCTION | CONTENTS | 3. METHODOLOGY | --> |
In this chapter, we will elaborate on the main theoretical positions we hold in our research, and review the relevant literature, in four sections. First, we look at the inherent power of written maps. Second, we consider the social implications of GIS' increasingly widespread use. Third, we situate ourselves in the history of applied and advocacy anthropology. Last, we discuss the continuing study of technology by anthropology.
| CONTENTS | REFERENCES |
This section discusses both a traditional and a revisionist perspective on maps by exploring the relationship between maps and the cultures that produce them, the role maps have played in the formation of empires and a states, and the ways in which maps may be used to support local empowerment and ecological awareness.
In the last few years, a new way of perceiving and interpreting maps has arisen out of a postmodern and reflective academic tradition that increasingly questions claims to truth made by science. This view challenges the more traditional notion of the Western map as purely "scientific," "objective" and "neutral," and therefore able to act as an accurate mirror of nature. In the traditional view, the cartographic mirror of nature is refined to become more and more "real," "accurate" (and believable): "by the application of science, ever more precise representations of reality can be produced" (Harley, 1989: 4). The more recent perspective argues that maps cannot be independent from their social, cultural, economic and political contexts; as such maps can be seen as cultural texts, more as mirrors of culture than as mirrors of nature.
In our research into this subject, we have been greatly inspired by two authors in particular. First, cartographic historian and professor of geography J.B. Harley has written extensively on the issue of maps and power. We have drawn especially from three of his papers: "Maps, Knowledge and Power" (1988), "Deconstructing the Map" (1989), and "Cartography, Ethics and Social Theory" (1990) all published in Cartographica, a journal which serves as a central arena for debate and discussion for the cartography community. Harley writes primarily to the discipline of cartography with a very deliberate aim to encourage an epistemological shift in the way we interpret maps (Ibid: 1).
Harley states that his aim is to critically analyze the map so that it can be viewed as the representation of power that it is. He suggests that the objective pretension to knowledge creation of the cartographer must come to an end and be substituted by an epistemology rooted in social science. "We can then begin to see how maps, like art, become a mechanism for defining social relationships, sustaining social rules and strengthening social values" (Ibid: 198). In this way, he asserts, we can counteract traditional cartography's tendency to view "maps as an impersonal type of knowledge that tend to desocialize the territory they represent ... [and] foster the notion of a socially empty space" (Harley 1988: 303). Maps reveals and conceal; and various social forces determine what gets on a map and what doesn't. This can be illustrated with a few examples of how so-called, apparently "objective" maps can be biased and value-filled.
As a rule, official cartography does not view the pursuit of social goals in the representation of the landscape as part of its mission. On the other hand, information contributing to branches of US government or business efficiency and competitiveness seems to have a high priority. You may ask yourself about what you see on official maps produced by government cartographers: are there highways? toxic dumps? minority groups settlements? county lines? drug treatment centers? The bias of a map is subtle because it often hides in what is not represented and visible. This is also spoken about as the silence of maps. Harley puts it well when he says: "much of the power of the map, as a representation of social geography, is that it operates behind a mask of seemingly neutral science" (Harley 1989: 7). What is on the map can also easily be deceiving unless you question the more subtle iconography. Harley asks: "do USGS maps really have to ignore the diversity of the religions they portray? Why do they continue to employ a cross sign indiscriminately for a mosque, a synagogue, and a Christian church?" (Harley, 1990: 14).
Another source of inspiration comes from David Turnbull (1993), who in collaboration with Helen Watson wrote the book Maps are Territories, Science is an Atlas. Both authors are associated with the Australian social studies program at Deakin University. Turnbull's book is a cross-cultural analysis of the interaction between European and Aboriginal knowledge systems, structured as eleven independent exhibits, which makes extensive use of a variety of illustrative and recent and historical Western and Aboriginal maps. Turnbull states it clearly "...the mapmaker determines what is, and equally important, what is not included in the representation. This is the first important sense in which maps are conventional. What is on the map is determined not simply by what is in the environment, but also by the human agent that produced it" (Ibid: 5). What becomes clear here is that as soon as the objectivity of a map is challenged, the issue of power appears almost immediately, and can be perceived by viewing the map as a text, as suggested by Turnbull.
Documents, texts, diagrams, lists, maps (discourses in general) embody power in a variety of ways. Discourses get the agenda of what kind of questions can be asked, what kind of answers are possible, and equally what kind of questions and answers are impossible within that particular discourse or text. (Turnbull, 1993: 54)
Applying these questions to any map will immediately begin to reveal the values embedded in a map. Try for example to find the location of bicycle trails on your automobile road map, or the closest toxic waste dump location on your tourist map!
As a further challenge and deconstruction of the Western map Turnbull compares knowledge representation of different cultures. From the point of view of the Western world, objects are seen as having fixed characteristics and defined boundaries and as having a position specifiable by spatial co-ordinates (Ibid: 3). Turnbull makes clear from the beginning that the Western worldview of space is challenged by the fact that:
...while spatiality may indeed be fundamental to all cultures, what actually counts as the "relative location" of particular objects may not be quite so basic and may constitute one of the variable that differentiate the way cultures experience the world. ...what counts as a natural object and its spatial relations, rather than being an invariant characteristic of the world, may instead form part of that culture's worldview, episteme, cognitive schema, ontology, or call it what you will. (Ibid: 2)
In light of this perspective on spatial relations, Turnbull suggests that maps demand a new standard of evaluation: "All maps can be related to experience, and instead of rating accuracy or scienticity we should consider their workability - how successful are they in achieving the aims for which they are drawn - and what is their range of application (Ibid: 42). But before we can consider the workability we must understand further the nature of Aboriginal maps. Turnbull writes,
Aboriginal maps can only be properly read or understood by the initiated, since some of the information they contain is secret. Their secrecy concerns the ways in which the map is linked to the whole body of knowledge that constitutes Aboriginal culture. For aborigines, the acquisition of that knowledge is a slow ritualized process of becoming initiated in the power-knowledge network, essentially a process open only to those who have passed through the earlier stages. By contrast, the Western knowledge system has the appearance of being open to all, in that nothing is secret. Hence all the objects on the map are located with respect to an absolute co-ordinate system supposedly outside the limits of our culture. (Ibid: 42)
Turnbull suggests that one might argue that everybody can read a Western map, but that understanding an Aboriginal map requires that you are initiated; and that therein lies the superiority and "universal applicability" of the Western map. However, in comparing a map of the London underground with an Aboriginal map of dreamtime landscape it may be
apparent that while sharing similar features and form, each is a different abstraction of a different landscape, the meaning of each is very different, and requires different cultural knowledge and different "initiations" to allow interpretation.
It is important again to remember here that the deconstruction of the Western map is not an attempt to posit the importance of one map over the other, but rather to increase our awareness of the consequences of different maps' use. An important voice in the mapping community is Doug Aberley, who speaks to the present state of affairs succinctly when he writes:
Maps have become popular investments to be hoarded, and under no circumstance used for any practical purpose. Yet amongst this avalanche of geographic blather, there are only two types of maps that most people really seem to use: the ubiquitous highway or tourist map that guides us ever onward to the next consumer experience; and the useful sterility of the topographic sheet which allows us mild adventure in the guise of tourism. If you were entirely cynical, you could view the appropriation of mapping from common understanding as just another police action designed to assist the process of homogenizing 5,000 human cultures into one malleable and docile market. As a collective entity we have lost our languages, have forgotten our songs and legends, and now cannot even conceive of the space that makes up that most fundamental aspect of life - home. (Aberley 1991: 2-3)
In her book Simians, Cyborgs, and Women - the Reinvention of Nature, feminist anthropologist Donna Haraway writes about "situated knowledge" as a critical response to contemporary scientific practices of observation. Haraway writes: "feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of object and subject. In this way we might become answerable for what we learn how to see" (Haraway 1991: 190). Haraway criticizes the development of the "all encompassing eye" of modern science and technology with the "infinite vision and mobility" it allows, and suggests instead a "'reembodied' vision that initiates, rather than closes off" (Ibid: 190). She makes the point that all maps are created from some position, some cultural location, and that it is essential to make this position explicit and then explore its consequences and potentials. Haraway's voice is important because she explores the dynamics of a Western technological trajectory which tries to represent visually an "objective" map/picture of our world on a larger scale: what does this do to our ability to sense, name and see the world? This is one of the important questions we must ask ourselves in this time in which human perception is being transformed by the machines we have created.
It is important to point out that Haraway's critique is brought into the human body, in contrast to the intellectualization of the subject matter by other authors that we have come across. Haraway illustrates this point very vividly in the following quote in which she argues that the objective of a more and more "accurate" view of the world represents a serious deception, suggesting that the disembodying tendencies of Western science and technology have reached an apogee:
The eyes have been used to signify a perverse capacity - honed to perfection in the history of science tied to militarism, capitalism, colonialism, and male supremacy - to distance the knowing subject from everybody and everything in the interest of unfettered power. The instruments of visualization in multinationalist, postmodernist culture have compounded these meanings of dis-embodiment. The visualizing technologies are without apparent limit; the eye of any ordinary primate like us can be endlessly enhanced by sonography systems, magnetic resonance imaging, artificial intelligence-linked graphic manipulation systems, scanning electron microscopes, computer-aided tomography scanners, home and office VDTs, cameras for every purpose from filming the mucous membrane lining the gut cavity of a marine worm living in the vent gases on a fault between continental plates to mapping a planetary hemisphere elsewhere in the solar system. Vision in this technological feast becomes unregulated gluttony; all perspective gives way to infinitely mobile vision, which no longer seems just mythically about the god-trick of seeing everything from nowhere, but to have put the myth into practice. And like the god-trick this eye fucks the world to make techno-monsters. (Ibid: 190-91)
Reflecting on the literature of this section, it might seem awkward to use Turnbull's mainly Australian Aboriginal material in the context of Hawai`i. The point however is not to become focused on the specific culture involved, but rather to begin to put maps and mapping into a larger context. We have found it to be a very illuminating experience to draw in perspectives from other cultures because it has brought a radical new dimension to our understanding of maps. As we have discussed in this section Turnbull and others are making important contributions in describing the limitations and biases of the Western map. Turnbull's work is also enriching because his use of non-Western maps does more than criticize Western maps - it introduces a provocative series of alternatives. Harley on the other hand is helpful deconstructing the map from a cartographic perspective but does not suggest real alternatives in his analysis. Haraway's work is not focused on maps or GIS per se, but her comments about shifts in our cultural vision, driven by technology, are important to the larger context of this discussion.
No discussion of Western maps would be complete, or could even begin, without an exploration of their relationship to empire, exploitation, and social, economic, and political power. Having suggested their intimate relationship with culture, and their inherent biases and agendas, we now explore some of their effects in the world.
Viewing the map as culturally constructed makes it possible to analyze the consequences of mapping in a larger framework of cultural history and thereby deepen our understanding of the role of the map. In this section we will give a few examples from the literature to show how mapping has played a part in the production and consolidation of power. As we will find, in the course of history, maps have consistently helped to control distant lands, inventory and exploit resources, and legitimize power relations and political boundaries. At the base of these mapping endeavors we can identify certain characteristics which lead to the creation of the nation-state and empire.
Turnbull's work helps to clarify how important the map was for Europeans in their quest for territory.
Western and non-Western societies alike are based on knowledge networks, the important difference being in the mobilization of the network. The Western one can be mobilized to cover the whole earth, if not the universe, whereas aboriginal ones are usually dependent on interpersonal oral modes of transmission. One of the most effective devices that Western maps employ in creating power is the grid.... (Turnbull 1993: 55)
The "grid" refers to the overarching system of longitude and latitude lines which was officially agreed upon by the global community at an international conference in Washington in 1884 (Ibid: 26). This system established a common reference to which people from different cultures and locations around the world could locate each other's relative position: it also made it possible to collect and connect many local maps into one representation, a development which would have many significant implications, for now "maps can be combined in one central place, and enable accumulation of power and knowledge at that center" (Ibid: 26). Turnbull argues that this collection enabled by the grid is even more crucial to the power of maps than either accuracy or correspondence with reality. The following story elaborates on this point in a historical context:
La Perouse travels through the Pacific for Louis XVI with the explicit mission of bringing back a better map. One day, landing on what he calls Sakhalin he meets with the Chinese and tries to learn from them whether Sakhalin is an island or a peninsula. To his great surprise the Chinese understand geography quite well. An older man stands up and draws a map of his island on the sand with the scale and the details needed by La Perouse. Another who is younger, sees that the rising tide will soon erase the map and picks up one of La Perouse's notebooks to draw the map again with a pencil ....What are the difference between the savage geography and the civilized one? ... The Chinese are quite able to think in terms of a map but also to talk about navigation on an equal footing with La Perouse. Strictly speaking, the ability to draw and to visualize does not really make a difference either, since they all draw maps more or less based on the same principle of projection, first on sand, then on paper.... La Perouse does something that is going to create an enormous difference between the Chinese and the European. What is, for the former, a drawing of no importance that the tide may erase, is for the latter the single object of his mission. What should be brought into the picture is how the picture is brought back. The Chinese does not have to keep track, since he can generate many maps at will, being born on this island and fated to die on it. La Perouse is not going to stay for more than a night; he is not born here and will die far away. What is he doing then? He is passing through all these places, in order to take something back to Versailles where many people expect his map to determine who was right and wrong about whether Sakhalin was an island, who will own this and that part of the world, and along which routes the next ships should sail. (Ibid: 55)
The rapid development of empire and the nation state was based on the acquisition and control of land, which depended on the utilization of maps. The assemblage of many local maps into one contiguous map made it possible for rulers from the fifteenth century onwards to command their expanding territories from afar to the degree that military enforcement allowed the protection of any acquired territory. The development of heavy commercial trading was also based on the contiguous map, which in some ways exploited local peoples' ignorance of each other and the larger grid. The captain with a good map could exploit the local market because he could navigate in and out of large territories at will, using a resource that had never been available before - the map/atlas.
Harley's description of how the map relates to the many issues of power and knowledge in his article "Maps, Knowledge and Power" is often quoted by other writers.
As much as guns and warships, maps have been the weapons of imperialism. Insofar as maps were used in colonial promotion, and lands claimed on paper before they were effectively occupied, maps anticipated empire. Surveyors marched alongside soldiers, initially mapping for reconnaissance, then for general information, and eventually as a tool for pacification, civilization, and exploitation in the defined colonies. (Harley, 1989: 282)
Whenever territories were conquered, maps came to play a more and more prominent role in reinforcing the status quo. The military's use of maps is associated with secrecy because territorial knowledge is fundamental and almost sacred information in any given war and therefore is protected with ultimate force. What is where when? must be known by a well prepared army.
Taylor explores in the case of Canada "how mapping and charting endeavors have shaped people's concepts of territory and national identity" (Taylor, 1994: 1). Harley discusses this on a general level:
In modern Western society maps quickly became crucial to the maintenance of state power - to its boundaries, to its commerce, to its internal administration, to control of populations, and to its military strength. Mapping soon became the business of the state: cartography is early nationalized. The state guards its knowledge carefully: maps have been universally censored, kept secret and falsified. (Harley, 1989: 12)
McHaffie writes of the relationship between maps and power in his brilliant analysis of the cartographic labor process as a state entity, in the book, Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems. The points made here underscore the immense power and influence that the mapping process has on society at large. McHaffie brings attention to the fact that U.S. mapping was developed during the late 19th and early 20th century, which was a period in industrial capitalism where Taylorism and scientific management were predominant in the organization of the industrial production process, characterized by the production/assembly line. These developments created a shift from topographic mapping, accomplished in the field, to an assembly line approach where the map production process was broken up. Mappers became more and more like technicians in a process, and for a product, they did not control. McHaffie points to the development of aerial photography as a factor that enhanced the Taylorian production process. "The aerial photographer could in a single day photograph hundreds of square miles and supply technicians with the necessary materials for map compilation. The maps were no longer required to `slog' into the messy reality of the field in order to produce the map" (McHaffie, 1995: 119). From then on a production process was established that was much more easily watched, controlled, and manipulated by the government.
A large-scale mapping effort by the U.S. government was agreed to in the Temple Act in 1925. This act committed the government to finish a general utility topographical survey of the entire country within 20 years. One of the missions of this large scale mapping endeavor was to serve as a precursor for geological, hydrological and botanical investigations; to lay the foundation for the exploitation of natural resources on an industrial level.
The mapping of Canada was characterized by the largest single integrated mapping program in the hemisphere, at a cost of more than $5 billion over thirty years. This massive project had as its goal more than just the representation of physical space. Taylor ends his article by suggesting that in looking at the most northern history of North America, the relevant question was not how Canadians created maps, but how maps created Canada. "...Canada ... could be said to be in large measure a geography become a state by being initially ruled on paper" (Taylor, 1994: 14).
Harley further states that "A mapless society, though we may take the map for granted, would now be politically unimaginable;" (Harley 1989: 12) in other words, maps are now essential to the nation-state. The nation-state has in the last 200 years superceded the watershed and bioregion as the territory that most people identify with, and has been a driving force behind massive survey and map creation efforts focused on the exploitation of resources and the control of populations. That the nation-state represents a relevant subject for our research is well articulated by Berry and Swimme (1992).
Although the primary principle of the nation state is that it recognizes no other power higher than itself in the sociopolitical order, by the reference to some sacred symbol in oaths of office the relation of human power to divine authority is still shown to constitute the basis of community rule even in supposedly circular states. The nation provides the unifying constituent reality of the higher self of the individuals composing the community. It quickly established itself as the functional myth of the community. The nation-state can be considered one of the most powerful forms ever invented.Of primary concern of the nation-state is the territory that it occupies. National boundaries are sacred. To be born within this sacred territory is to be a citizen. The territory must be defended at whatever cost. This contraction of sacred territory from the entire range of the natural world goes with a contraction in the concept of species unity in the human order. The comprehensive sacred community of the entire planet becomes less evident. So too a radical division is created between the citizens of the various nations; where one nation is sacred other nations can be seen as demonic.
Membership in a nation community easily becomes more significant than membership in a religious or cultural tradition. The nation-state has indeed become the sacred community. Although sacred in its political implications, the land occupied is recognized more as territory to be exploited economically than as territory to be communed with spiritually.... The nation-state was from the beginning an affair of the bourgeois, of those possessing private property.... (Swimme and Berry, 1992: 213)
If the nation-state has been the "sacred community," then maps have often been their bibles, delineating boundaries and reifying ownership and power relations. Swimme and Berry suggest that the nation-state recognizes land "more as territory to be exploited economically than to be communed with spiritually," and since it is typically large and wealthy enough to undertake the massive surveys and mapping efforts to inventory and plot the location of resource stores, maps produced in nation-states tend to reflect economic priorities, not social ones. With these perspectives in mind it becomes clear that, "Maps are preeminently a language of power, not of protest" (Harley, 1988: 301).
A present day example of a large-scale mapping project is the Brazilian government's 1.4 billion dollar project which will attempt to control drug smuggling, looting and other crimes through the use of GIS and high-tech monitoring systems, which will be used to map unmapped regions of the rainforest, and to keep track of goings on within;
The system will superimpose state-of-the-art technology over 2 million square miles of wild frontier, where settlers and prospectors still clash with naked Indians in the primeval forest. Digital data will zip from satellites, radar and other high-tech sensors to computerized processing centers and hundreds of 'user-nodes' scattered through the hinterlands. (Long, 1995)
Harley has argued that the power of maps has not been "a power exercised over individuals but over the knowledge of the world made available to people in general" (Harley 1989: 13). This point may have been true in a time when maps required massive survey efforts and state sanction and funding - maps thus created not only included the biases and limitations of the survey, but represented the physical world at a specific time - new surveys might not be done for years, decades, or longer. However, new mapping and monitoring technologies may offer the ability to approach the equivalent of large-scale surveys at varying levels of detail, which can provide continuous, real-time information and feedback. Such technologies may produce new maps which have the power to alter our knowledge of the world, as well as to confer significant real-time power over individuals, in the form of surveillance: these potentials will be discussed in section 2.2.
Doug Aberley (1995) is one of the only Western (Cascadian/Candadian) mapmakers who not only critiques the current state of map production and use, but who also actually practices and teaches an alternative mapmaking which is grounded in situated, local knowledge. In a book called Giving the Land a Voice: Mapping our Home Places, Aberley and collaborators decry the modern appropriation of maps by special interests.
The maps we are accustomed to have been made for commercial, not social reasons. They are our road maps, geological maps, forest resource maps, tourist maps, marine charts - an endless parade of utilitarian special interest maps. All are valuable and necessary, but they inevitably fail to reveal the essence of where we live, and how our community fits into a larger region. Until we have maps that do this, we risk being geographically located, but socially and culturally lost. (Harrington, 1995: 2)
What are the consequences of the commercialization of maps for people living in specific regions? What happens when people not only no longer live in ways that are connected to seasons, local flora and fauna, and geology, but who attempt to locate themselves on maps merely designed to link restaurants, roads, urban areas...? Aberley's perspective, alternative, and its context are important parts of this overall picture, and will be described in the next section.
Following the above discussion of the powers and implications of mapping, we present here a smaller literature on mapping which seeks to empower people in their cultural context. As mentioned above, one important figure in this literature and movement is bioregional mapper Doug Aberley, whose pioneering work seeks to awaken and empower local people to "just do it!" and take the initiative in mapping their home region. Aberley has recently directed a large scale 24 layer mapping project (including historical, social, environmental, economic layers) in the bioregion of Cascadia, which includes an area from northern California, through British Columbia, to southern Alaska. Aberley is also the author of an important resource entitled Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment (1993) Perhaps most significantly, Aberley, more than any other writer on these subjects we have come across, offers an empowering process that encourages one to begin mapping what is already known about one's own neighborhood/community/local area. Here he writes about a growing movement among indigenous people to express their own stories, and to defend their territory and culture with maps.
In direct opposition to the paradigm of the single global market, Aboriginal peoples are articulating a competing vision in a healthy variety of ways. Aboriginal peoples are courageously defending themselves against cultural and physical genocide. Societies swallowed in the last two hundred years of industrialization are awakening from a slumber imposed by promises of the nation state. And, perhaps most important, people of many origins who find themselves newly planted in city or in country are asserting their aspirations for political and economic regimes that mix the best of what has been taken, lost, or forgotten. At the same time, the ways of the past are being adapted to a present that offers challenging opportunities for the use of technologies which allow self-reliance and interdependence. The common element is that of reinhabitation - of place, of traditions old and new, of a future based on local aspirations for stability of life, and interconnection. (Aberley, 1993: 2-3)
The best source in the literature for specific examples of this movement comes from the geographer and activist Peter Poole (1995a), who has just released a survey on 63 mapping projects around the world conducted by indigenous peoples who are utilizing manual and computerized mapping techniques in their struggle for empowerment, land rights cases and self-determination in general. This survey gives valuable information on a variety of ways that local people are taking the initiative and utilizing ancient and modern technologies for their own mapping purposes. Poole was also the guest editor of Cultural Survival's special edition on Geomatics (1995b) which will be discussed below, in section 4.3.2 of the history and context chapter.
Denis Wood (1992), author of Power of Maps cites Conservation International's efforts to co-relate the world's most biologically diverse regions to areas most threatened by habitat destruction on the map "Biodiversity at Risk."
CI (Conservation International) researchers took a significant step toward identifying habitats at greater risk by charting data showing the distribution of human disturbance of ecosystems throughout the world. This poster ... illustrates some of the most important criteria CI uses to set conservation priorities. (Wood, 1992: 190-91)
"Biodiversity at Risk" is a good example of a map whose explicit purpose is to display information about the negative consequences of human behavior, rather than simply purporting to display "neutral" geo-spatial information. It is also an example of how maps may be used deliberately for political reasons to emphasize a particular point. This map, in other words, provides an example of agenda made conscious and explicit, in contrast to most Western maps, which conceal or are themselves unaware of their agenda(s).
Stephen Hall (1992) has written a fascinating book called Mapping the Next Millennium which is an eclectic survey of diverse mapping initiatives in science today. Hall covers projects ranging from the mapping of the brain to the mapping of the outer universe, to charting the ocean floors. He also writes a provocative introduction to mapping and finishes with an historical overview which situates his research in the larger context of mapping. Here Hall suggests that the field of mapping is in an unprecedented state of activity and possibility:
Here, as we are poised to enter the next millennium, we find ourselves in the midst of what is arguably the greatest explosion in mapping and perhaps the greatest reconsideration of "space" (in every sense of that word), since an anonymous Babylonian first attempted to organize human knowledge of the physical world by drawing a map of the world on a clay tablet twenty-six centuries ago. (Hall, 1993: 6)
After the previous discussion of the relationship between maps, culture, empire, exploitation, and protest, we suggest that such an "explosion in mapping," of which GIS will no doubt play a significant part, deserves careful consideration and reflection. Our view is that given the subtle and largely unrecognized power of cartographic maps to hide their substantial biases with the appearance of objectivity and their role in exploitation, subjugation, and empire, a thorough exploration of the new powers conferred on maps through their evolution into digital, computerized form is highly appropriate.
Drawing on the revisionist theoretical perspective on maps we have described in this chapter, we hope in our own research to contribute to a wider understanding outside the fields of cartography and geography of the importance and power of maps, especially with respect to their recent computerized evolution. We will place our analysis of GIS in a specific political and historical context, though focused on the present and future. By situating our research within the current self-determination struggle of the Nation of Hawai`i in Hawai`i, we hope to gain new insight into the complexity of knowledge representation in a modern, dynamic, and diverse social context.
In this section, we have discussed one part of the conceptual foundation for our research in Hawai`i. In the next section, we will build on this theoretical exploration of written maps, and introduce a series of issues involving the social consequences of the utilization of Geographic Information Systems.
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In this section we give an introduction into the recent field of literature which explores the social implications of GIS. Concentrating our work into three subsections, we begin by introducing the main current contributors on this subject, then explore how GIS relates to assumptions of objectivity, neutrality, and gender, and then examine the issue of knowledge production and representation in GIS, and how GIS deals with other ways of knowing.
The success of GIS on a global scale has proceeded with a minimal amount of debate about the broader impacts on society. This is quite understandable because of the historic origins of GIS in land and property information systems. However, it is clearly important that as the technology starts to be used and more directly affect the environment and lives of people that there is a much better understanding of how to use it in an intelligent sensible and sensitive way. (Openshaw, 1996: *)
In the past, GIS research fell into the categories of how to build the tools, how to use the tools, and how to install the tools in an organization. Recently, however, a new prong of GIS discourse has emerged- the social implications of GIS. The idea of a critique of GIS technologies and their associated prescriptions for solving problems is one that is important and long overdue. (Scott & Cutter, 1996: *)
Both critics and supporters have little evidence of the actual result of the change in mapping technology. There have been some rudimentary economic studies, but very few studies that address the social outcomes. I believe we need well-designed research using historical reconstructions, case studies, ethnography, participant observation, and other social science methods. (Chrisman, 1996: *)
(* indicates a quote taken from a paper which appears on an Internet World Wide Web site, and thus has no page numbers)
In some ways it is exciting to be among the first researchers in an area; in other ways it is quite challenging. Our experience has at times made us feel like explorers venturing into unknown territory, with few paths, guides, or maps to use in navigating the new terrain. We have been challenged not only to piece together a map of the relevant socio-political territory relating to GIS, but also to go beneath the surface of many issues to grasp deeper meanings beyond the rhetoric, the enthusiasm, and the hype of this large and quickly expanding industry, research and user communities.
Substantive research on the social implications of GIS has only recently emerged (primarily in the last three years), and mainly in the field of geography. Relevant commentary and discussion have appeared from writers in other fields, but geographers are for the most part the only critical examiners of both the social origins and social consequences of Geographical Information Systems technology. We have found three sources as primary areas of concentrated reflection: a book entitled Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems, edited by John Pickles (1995); Sheppard and Poiker's editing of the January 1995 issue of Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, under the title "GIS and Society;" and position papers of a very recent conference sponsored by the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) focused on the topic of "GIS and Society." (March 1996)
On a general note relating to all the literature we have reviewed, we must say that we have mostly seen works of either intellectual hypotheses and critique, or specific, relatively unreflective, focused applications of GIS. While both are often useful and illuminating, one thing became clear to us right away in this research, and that was the consistent calls for, and obvious need for, more comprehensive, grounded and critical research. The critical research on the social implications of GIS is very nascent, and it is to the credit of John Pickles, Eric Sheppard, Tom Poiker, Peter Poole, and the NCGIA that important issues relating to the potentials and pitfalls of this technology are being raised at all in a forum for debate and reflection.
However, while the many discussions of use of this technology for social control and surveillance by a "GIS technocracy" are disturbing enough (Obermeyer, 1995, 1996), what is perhaps more unnerving is the prospect that the debates over ethics and social implications of these issues should take place only among a self-selected group of geographers. While they have made a good beginning, delineating major issue areas and asking many provocative questions, we suggest that it is time for the discussion to be broadened to include sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, linguists, philosophers, historians, and other relevant disciplines and communities (such as local community groups, the GIS software and consulting industry, etc.). The added inspiration of other theoretical currents, methodologies, and perspectives can only enrich the exploration of these issues, we feel. Ultimately the subject matter should be broadened to situate GIS into a larger context of information technology, social transformation, and other related global trends and currents. An exploration of the actual relationship between critical research and applied GIS work, innovation, and industry is paramount, though we saw it thoroughly treated only by Miller (1995), in an article entitled "Beyond Method, Beyond Ethics, Integrating Social Theory into GIS and GIS into Social Theory" where he discusses the tendencies and reasons for dismissal of academic research by applied GIS or geography practitioners, and elaborates on the crucial relationship between designers and users. (Miller's work will be considered in the final chapter.)
As one example of the potential benefit to this research by another discipline, anthropology stands to add a grounded, qualitative dimension to the research on the social impacts of GIS through participant observation and ethnographic research, along with its emphasis on keeping an open mind and attempting to make personal biases clear. Additionally, to some extent, anthropology has problematized such concepts as "objective," "neutral," and (hard) "scientific." This is relevant because as we will discuss below, there are many proponents of geography and GIS who assume that maps are indeed neutral, objective, scientific mirrors of reality, and deny (or haven't explored the implications of) the inherently biased, subjective, and cultural nature of maps. Ethnography, on the other hand, has largely resolved to tell stories, seeking to explore the telling and the impacts of the teller's own cultural context, as much as the subject of the story, thereby revealing the subjective nature of stories. Issues of power, representation, and knowledge have been deeply explored in anthropology, and such experience could perhaps illumine and foster productive reflection in geography, cartography, and the GIS realm in general.
We would like to organize our discussion of this literature into two areas that directly relate to our research intentions. First we explore the critique that GIS is not a neutral, objective, value-free mirror for the world, but rather that it is a socially constructed. Second, GIS is examined for the ways in which it may privilege some forms of information and knowledge and exclude others, the way information may be manipulated and "re-formed" to fit the specific requirements of a GIS database, and the extent to which all information is value-laden.
We begin by asking, to what extent is GIS a neutral, objective, value-free mirror for the world, and to what extent is it a product of the society that created it? From the perspective of the GIS user, GIS software producers, and the enthusiastic industries surrounding GIS, one may easily get the impression that this is a straightforward, politically neutral technology developed for specific applications, which has become better at representing and providing information about the physical world over the last decade of its mass production. (Some sources of this perspective might be Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), GIS World magazine, GIS trade conferences, the Government Technology Bulletin, Scholten (1990)). This perspective mirrors the traditional view of the "neutral," "objective" western cartographic map.
Within recent academic research on GIS, we have found a very consistent critique similar to the critique of cartographic maps, that GIS not only has social effects, but that it is itself formed by, permeated with, and embedded in Western social values and assumptions. Aitken and Michel (1995) assert that not only is this a significant realization in itself, but it is very helpful, in understanding GIS, to start from this conceptual foundation. Sheppard states it clearly, "(GIS) is not a value-free tool, but views the world through particular filters. Some of these filters may reflect the technical conditions of digital computing, others may reflect the particular paths that GIS development has taken, and thus also the societal conditions shaping these paths" (Sheppard, 1995: 12).
The embeddedness of GIS is explored in several probing essays and articles that have significantly increased our understanding and awareness of the deeper nature and assumptions of this technology, and of our society. Roberts and Schein (1995: 178) suggests that the central assumption of GIS is that it can produce a perfect representation of the physical world. Hillis (1996: *) suggests that this quest for perfect representation is motivated by an ancient Western longing for absolute clarity, a sort of philosopher's stone of consciousness . Deconstruction of GIS in the literature has led to many assertions: that GIS and computers in general are based on binary digitization, Euclidean geometry, Boolean logic, Newtonian ontology, Western epistemology and ontology, and that all these are essentially cultural, not neutral or objective foundations and have cultural consequences (Sheppard, 1995; Miller, 1995; Rundstrom, 1995; McHaffie, 1996; Sui, 1996; Veregin, 1996; Scott and Cutter, 1996).
Upon examining this literature we found ourselves increasingly dubious about the implicit and explicit claims of GIS to be a neutral technology which offers a mirror of "physical reality." In the words of Veregin (1996*), who speaks here about maps in the context of GIS: "Because underlying values are often not consciously recognized, maps tend to reflect the social order and to reify and legitimate it. The rules of social order insert themselves into maps in a way that makes the map a commentary on the social structure of the place and time it was created." The ways in which this technology is actually laden with subtle, hidden theories and assumptions about society should interest and concern both social theorists, activists, users, and developers alike. All this having been said however, we quite agree with Sheppard (1995) in that we should recognize the power and creativity of current GIS and their innovators; to acknowledge what they have enabled and contributed, and yet to recognize their embeddedness within a larger cultural matrix.
As one example of embeddedness and non-neutrality, Sheppard points out that GIS has a reductive data structure, in that individuals are the fundamental unit of analysis. Quoting an earlier article by Levine, he explains that this amounts to a social theory of "methodological individualism: 'the view that social explanations are ultimately reducible to individual-level explanations' ... [although] the inventory of individual properties which are the basis for explaining social phenomena extend far beyond the beliefs, desires, and other psychological properties of individuals" (Sheppard, 1995: 11). Sheppard points out that while this assumption is a feature of most GIS, it does not have to be.
Important contributions come from several writers who examine the ways in which Western society's social structure affects GIS and our perception of the world. McHaffie (1996*) suggests that GIS is a heavily gendered technology, emerging from a male, rational, disembodied mindset of the scientific-technological culture. Haraway (1991) argues from a feminist perspective that GIS and other related technologies feed the Western appetite for disembodied images, which ultimately affirms the omnipotence of the "God's view" (seeing Earth from space), and implicitly, the Godlike nature of that view's creators. Haraway criticizes GIS' developers for hiding the constructors of the images and interface so completely, rendering invisible the biases and agendas that underlie the creation of these systems.
In an important passage from Geographic Imagination, Gregory (1994) quotes Heidegger and examines the relationship between the "world as picture," anthropocentrism, and objectivity: it is so significant that we will quote it at length.
"The fundamental event of the modern age is the conquest of the world-as-picture." For it is through the process of enframing that " man contends for the position in which he can be that particular being who gives the measure and draws up the guidelines for everything that is" ...Within this modern optic, the "certainty of truth" is made to turn on the need to establish a distance between observer and observed. From that position (from that perspective) order may be dis-covered and re-presented... Without a separation of the self from a picture ... it becomes impossible to grasp "the whole," the experience of the world as an enframed totality, something that forms a structure or system ...What makes such a conception so unusual is that the process of enframing on which it relies conjures up a framework that seems to exist apart from, and prior to, the objects it contains - a framework that appears "as order itself, conceived in no other terms than the order of what `appears' as order itself, conceived in no other terms than the orderless, the coordinator of what was discontinuous." This is a highly particular way of going about, and indeed being in the world, so Mitchell argues, which is peculiar to European modernity ... Indeed, non-Occidental visitors to the world exhibitions at the close of the nineteenth century saw them as emblematic of "the strange character of the West, a place where one was continually pressed into service as a spectator by a world ordered so as to represent. (Gregory, 1994: 36)
"A framework that seems to exist apart from, and prior to, the objects it contains," recalls the grid discussed in the previous chapter, and invokes Haraway's work, who goes beyond merely pointing out the distance between viewer and viewed, and writes about the tendency for GIS to foster disembodied knowledge, a point explored by Gregory.
The systematic privilege accorded to vision within Western modernity.... This privilege is central to GIS and other, still more radical developments in virtual reality and cyberspace. The power to display complex data sets in three dimensions, to rotate, manipulate and track across their terrains and to collapse continental and even global landscapes with agonizing clarity during the Gulf War of 1990-1991, a conflict which Smith describes as the first full-scale GIS war.The first, and still most famous image of the whole unshadowed globe was captured in December 1972.... My point is that even these high-tech global images that construct the world-as-exhibition in such a dazzling display have to be produced from somewhere. The subsequent development of GIS has hidden its viewing platforms even more effectively, however, and much of the discussion continues to treat GIS as a detached "science" or as a natural commodification of information. In doing so a rhetoric of concealment is deployed that passes over these configurations of power-knowledge in virtual silence.
It is precisely this ideology of abstraction and detachment, the hidden platform, that Haraway calls into question through her discussion of situated knowledges. She challenges the modern decorporealization of vision, which she describes in resolutely Foucaultian terms as the gaze that "mythically inscribes all the marked bodies, that makes unmasked the claim and the power to see and not be seen, to represent while escaping representation," and argues that this myth is carried forward and embodied within the visualizing practices of late twentieth century technosciences.
"Vision in this technological feast becomes unregulated gluttony; all perspective gives way to infinitely mobile vision, which no longer seems just mythically about the god-trick of seeing everything from nowhere, but to have put the myth into ordinary practice."
Haraway is not talking about geology or GIS either, but the parallels are much closer. The NASA photograph exemplifies exactly that "god-trick of seeing everything from nowhere," and subsequent developments in remote sensing and GIS have extended the reach of human vision still further.... (Ibid: 64-66)
As Wood (1992) argues in The Power of Maps, the increasing transparency of GIS images both to the user and to the viewer of its images hides the producer, the assumptions and limitations of the software, and yet increases its claims to objectivity and neutrality. In the case of GIS, one of the most fundamental unstated (and perhaps unintended) consequences may be the creation of a new arena - a new virtual world that (as in the map (Harley 1989) allows conquest and exploitation in this world. "The digital landscape becomes a terrain for elite planners to negotiate social differences and territorial conflict. In the process, workers, minorities, women, poor peasants, and the unemployed, become even further distanced from the decision-making process" (Weiner, 1995: 30). Schoenhoff suggests in this vein, that "...we have traded actuality for increased manipulation" (1993: 98). This virtual world is taken to be essentially real because of the seductiveness and beauty of the medium, the invisibility of both the technology and its creators, as well as the disembodied-ness of the viewer. An essential point here is that GIS differs from the map in that it may not simply be mistaken for the territory, but that it may in fact be substituted for the territory. Couclecis elaborates:
Just as television (unlike the newspaper) blurs spatio-temporal distinctions and substitutes the illusion of direct experience for the narrative ("once upon a time, once upon a place..."), GIS (unlike the map or the text) lets you see and explore the world without the hassle of the trip, the field work, the regional study, the voyage of discovery. Come on, kids, let's have GIS show you your neighborhood! Look through this screen, politicians, and see where your worst problem lie! (Couclecis, 1996: *)
Such developments as cyberspace and the virtual worlds of GIS not only provide countless areas for research and exploration, but we suggest they must be studied, critiqued, and evaluated to ascertain their impact on and potential for society. While this is beginning to happen, more exploration is needed; especially utilizing cross-cultural reflection, which may continuously expand and renew the debate. One problem with today's trajectory in GIS and mapping is raised by Couclecis: "...others have commented on the dangers of reducing the geographic to the measurable and the visual, and of the silent, invisible, or abstract geographies that may fall by the wayside" (1996: *). This point invokes a subject we want to explore in the following section - that of other geographies, perspectives, worldviews, and paradigms; the ways in which they are systematically excluded by GIS, and their ability to shed light on the deeper nature of GIS and its potentials.
Perhaps the central questions to ask with regard to knowledge representation in GIS are: what types of GIS-ready information generally exist, and what types of information are either excluded or not even considered for inclusion into GIS?
With respect to typical GIS data subjects, Sheppard (1995) and Atkinson (1993) maintain that geographic analysis is driven by the availability of data, and that data collection is driven not by theory or public participation and need, but by people and institutions who may or may not have any idea of what the varied data needs of different communities are.
Barndt (1996) deepens this point, suggesting a certain question that is not generally asked, and alluding to the power of existing data to limit the terms of debate: "While it is easier to demonstrate the power of GIS by performing exercises which fit the data that is most available, it is important to ask the question - What data is needed? Data frequently focuses upon deficiencies and problem indicators individuals face rather than the failures of institutions that are important elements in the problems communities identify" (Barndt, 1996: *). The subtle ways that existing GIS data sets define the parameters of debate, limit the questions that can be asked, and insert subtle biases and assumptions into the fray are essential areas for further focused, contextualized research.
What types of information are either excluded or not even considered? In Pickles' book Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems, Harris (1995) asserts that in this top-down bureaucratic data production model, GIS "empowers the powerful and disenfranchises the weak and not so powerful via the selective participation of groups and individuals" (Pickles, 1995: 202). The potential for GIS to utilize local, "fuzzy", and non-Western knowledge systems is a subject of speculation and debate by many authors (including Proctor, 1996; Sui, 1996; Weiner, 1996; Rundstrom, 1995; Sheppard, 1995; Pickles, 1995), and is by no means resolved. One of the most interesting recent contributions is a team working in South Africa and West Virginia, which is exploring how GIS can incorporate multiple realities and competing representations of space and environment, and includes experimentation with multimedia GIS. This team is broadening the use of computer-based geographical information through a GIS production process that includes community participation. Of particular interest are the ways in which "voices from below" are digitally represented and how socially differentiated local knowledge might be incorporated into GIS production and use (Weiner 1995: 55).
We only allude to these important issues of knowledge selection and incorporation here and will further explore them later in the thesis. It will be suggested that such a new GIS system could require a completely new understanding of what information is, and a dramatically expanded ability to collect and integrate knowledges of different types into a GIS.
If some forms of knowledge are privileged, an important area to examine here is the issue of their data bias. Much of the critical literature we read is in agreement that as in non-computerized maps, data is never neutral, but rather is laden with the biases of those who produced it. As Hillis says,
...to believe that data might be value free suggests a credulousness, or a misplaced faith that they exist in a natural state like rocks or trees. They are not composed of the same substances as that which they represent. Data are more like metaphors or `mappings' which equally can serve to disguise or mask the spaces they represent, as to reveal invisible particularities in spatial form. (Hillis, 1996: *)
Many authors suggest that the use of second-hand data is not without risk, as it is "already laden with theories, purposes and social norms of the agencies who collect them..." (Scott and Cutter, 1996*).
A very productive way to explore these issues further is to examine the work of several authors who explode the traditional debate of a Western technology being evaluated by Western theories. Challenging us to consider wholly alternative ways of knowing and seeing, they offer us the opportunity to see afresh, from indigenous peoples' perspectives. This not only reveals the cultural nature of GIS, but offers a challenge to any claim that GIS represents the "best" cultural approach (Rundstrom, 1995; Wiener, 1995; Harris, 1995). Weiner (1996: *) even goes so far as to suggest that the "astounding success" of GIS has been based upon its being composed of "one non-contradictory perception of reality." Sui (1996: *) poses the question, "Has GIS technology inadvertantly marginalized other insightful epistemologies?"
In a provocative and somewhat daring article, Rundstrom (1995) suggests that with the benefit of experience in an indigenous context, GIS is seen in new ways - our assumptions and biases are significantly challenged, and other alternatives are revealed. GIS, he claims, fosters (and emerges from) an anthropocentric view of the world - one that considers only the needs of humans, and sees the world as fully manipulatable and existing for the benefit and exploitation of humans. Indigenous people, he claims, see the world more from a "biocentric" perspective, that is, one in which humans assume a part of a larger whole of life and interconnectedness.
Rundstrom asserts that contrary to the many binary oppositions and dualities of Western thinking (perhaps based on the digital computer) in which ambiguities are a liability, indigenous thought emphasizes ambiguities, which are essential to preserve the nuances of meaning and the subtleties of life. Proctor (1996: *) elaborates, "Any fuzziness in (the GIS as mirror of nature) is understood to be a function of biological complexity - to be reduced as more data become available."
In a direct reply to, and in support of Haraway in the first section above, Rundstrom discusses the purposes and implications of inscribed knowledge; of separating knowledge from the knower.
...each time the information is used it becomes more distant from its original intent and context. It starts losing layers of meaning almost immediately. This is especially relevant to the aesthetic, ceremonial, and spiritual character of human existence. In contemporary GIS technology, "re-presentation" retains only the form of the knowledge, not its full content. The information becomes a mere shadow of what it used to be.... inscribed knowledge enables the source and recipient of the knowledge to be separated in time and space. In the GIS community, such separation is an enormous asset partly because it is important for remotely located specialists to have convenient access to the GIS, and partly because the Western world, particularly the United States, still perceives itself as the overseer.... (1995: 52)
Thus knowledge incription leads to the loss of meaning and separation of viewer and viewed which, while criticized by Haraway, is viewed as a distinct asset by others.
It is challenging to be concise in our report on the rich material in this section; Rundstrom alone raises countless points that should be considered in great detail. Rundstrom (1995), Weiner (1995a), Harris (1995), Schoenhoff (1993), Turnbull (1993), Wood (1992), and Poole (1995) all add very important dimensions to this discussion, which challenge many of the basic, fundamental premises of the Western debate in general.
While many authors are optimistic about the possibility that GIS can integrate multiple knowledge systems and voices, or at least that it is worth trying, Rundstrom is skeptical.
My interests in the geographical ideas of indigenous peoples of North America and the impact of Western technology in non-Western settings have led me to consider GIS as potentially toxic to human diversity, notably the diversity of systems for knowing about the world. I will argue two main points: the Western or European-derived system for gathering and using information is in numerous ways incompatible with corresponding systems developed by indigenous peoples of the Americas; and GIS technology, when applied cross-culturally, is essentially a tool for epistemological assimilation, and as such, is the newest link in a long chain of attempts by Western societies to subsume or destroy indigenous cultures. (Rundstrom, 1995: 45)
We remain open about the potential of GIS use by indigenous people, though we keep a very (responsibly) critical eye toward any and all claims made regarding the benefits of this new technology. Despite the enthusiasm of the GIS industry and the optimism of some of the research for socially beneficial potentials of this technology, there are also many important explorations of the potentials for GIS to be used for surveillance, social control, and consolidation of state power.
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The discipline of anthropology, like all academic disciplines, has undergone substantial changes since its inception. Several scholars suggest that one central shift has been from a purely abstract approach; research for the sake of knowledge acquisition, to the emergence of an increasingly "applied," anthropology in the last thirty to fifty years. (Chaiken and Fleuret, 1990; Allen, 1994; Stull 1987) In our own research, we have found it useful to understand the nature and background of "applied" and "abstract" anthropology. Stull and colleagues offer one perspective.
Some argue that there are fundamental differences in the theories and methods of "applied" and "abstract" anthropology. Our view is that all anthropologists utilize the same array of theoretical frameworks and research methods. If the methodology is carefully articulated, there can be no question about the soundness of anthropological research in an applied setting. The differences between applied and abstract anthropology lie in the processes of selecting the problem, deciding on appropriate methodology, analyzing the results, and utilizing the information. (Stull, 1987: 3)
It may be true that the process of selecting the problem and methodology, analyzing the results and utilizing the information are what distinguish applied from abstract anthropology, but an implicit suggestion in Bodley's (1990) pioneering work in Victims of Progress is that an even more central issue than the stated purpose of research, or whether it is "applied" or not, is to ask - what are the actual effects of anthropology's application, and what are the hidden biases, beliefs, and power relationships that may contribute to these effects? Stull, suggests that while the roots of applied anthropology go back more than fifty years - that "anthropology began with a commitment to resolve human problems. The work of the Aboriginal Protection Society in London and the Women's Anthropological Society of Washington in the 19th century initiated a series of dialogues on the proper role of the social sciences in problem solving and social change"(Stull, 1987: 1). However, as Bodley clearly articulates, it is important to go beyond merely acknowledging anthropologists' application of research, and look into the actual effects of their work: "to resolve human problems," as it turns out, is itself a problematic intention.
Bodley explores the history and implications of research on and with indigenous people, and points out that given the continued destruction of indigenous peoples in the last two centuries, there have been several responses from researchers over time. Some researched to "save the data" before it is destroyed, some tried to minimize the most negative effects of the conquest, others have supported the integrationist policies of states. However, until the early 20th century and the advent of the "humanitarian preservationists," (so called because of their commitment to the right of indigenous peoples to determine their own destiny, free of outside interference), no one saw beyond the paradigm of the time and advocated just leaving indigenous people alone. This point is essential in understanding that research may indeed be intended for 'the solution of human problems,' but this leaves unaddressed countless issues, including that of power dynamics: Bodley reminds us that for some researchers allied with states, indigenous peoples have been problems to be solved.
Today there are groups dedicated to research and direct support of indigenous peoples. This approach could be called "advocacy" anthropology, and includes the Anthropology Resource Center (ARC), the International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), Cultural Survival, Survival International, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), Colonialism and Indigenous Minorities Research and Action (CIMRA), and International Development Action (IDA) (Bodley, 1990: 204-206). A main focus of "applied," and "advocacy" anthropology is a general "brokering between local communities and larger sociopolitical entities" (Stull, 1987: 10) for the empowerment of these less powerful, often sociopolitically marginalized groups. Such anthropological research has often been critical of traditional "top-down" development approaches, and is credited to some extent by Chaiken and Fleuret for the shift "away from assumptions that benefits would indeed `trickle-down' to the rural masses, and towards a new emphasis on local participation in all phases of the development process" (Chaiken and Fleuret, 1990: 13-14).
In the foreword to Allen's (1994) Media Anthropology, Mary Catherine Bateson asserts that anthropology students of the last three decades have demanded greater "relevance" and "marketability" from their professors, departments, discipline, and from their own research efforts (Allen, 1994: xiv). On a larger level, this demand by students coincides with the emerging importance of issues relating to cultural difference at many levels of society, and the breakdown of the formerly predictable, insular arenas of the anthropologist. Bateson explains,
At one time, most anthropologists lived in neatly segmented worlds, each offering considerable privacy: the field, the academy, the home society. In the field the anthropologist was ethnographer - looking, listening and observing, learning the ways of some other community, usually small and exotic. In the academy, the anthropologist was educator and expert. In the society at large, the anthropologist merited mild curiosity and was largely irrelevant. Each sphere of activity called for a different kind of behavior, even a different language.This is no longer the case. Anthropologists are increasingly acting as liaisons between their research communities and outsiders, while questions of cultural difference have acquired central policy-making importance. .... Decisions are being everywhere for which anthropologists have essential input, and it must be made available. The comfortable privacy of the academy is no longer a refuge. (Ibid: xiiv-xiv)
What is the nature of the "essential input" anthropologists have to offer the "real" world of social problems, and is it offering this input today? Susan Allen discusses this issue,
...anthropology is unique among all of Western science in its potential to build contextual frameworks on which to hang the scattered details of life and evoke a perspective that asks us to see the seemingly separate aspects of life in that context, as part of their larger whole. Through some inspired vision or magical piece of synchronicity, the theories and methods that can provide a framework for global, intercultural, and perhaps even holistic perspectives were developed by the profession of anthropology as it generated the tools to understand "whole" cultures. It is now up to us anthropologists to learn to apply these methods and theories - and the perspectives they make possible - to issues of the day, within a global context.For example, as American Anthropological Association past-president Annette B. Weiner and anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson recently asked in a Chronicle of Higher Education article (1992), "Where are the anthropologists?" in the current, befuddled national debate on multiculturalism! The absence of an anthropological voice in this debate is being sorely felt - as it is in most other topical issues. I suggest this is primarily because what we need to aid understanding of these complex topics is not "more information" but some context and perspective for the information we have. (Ibid: xviii-xix)
The direct involvement of anthropologists in the debates and conflicts of modern times and modern society is increasing. One unprecedented example is the recent direct intervention by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) into a crisis facing indigenous people in Sri Lanka. The AAA sent a letter in March 1996 to Sri Lanka's Prime Minister which communicated the association's objection to the displacement of the Wanniya-laeto people from their ancestral land that they have inhabited for 28,000 years, and asked for their return or access to the land. Daniel Goleman writes that action,
...was the first formal action by a Committee for Human Rights established by the association last October in a step designed to move anthropology as a profession to an activist stance taken only erratically in the past, and usually by individual anthropologists. The letter marked the first time the anthropological association has actively intervened in a dispute, although it has taken political positions in the past....(One of the) Principles of Professional Responsibility of the anthropological association ... reads: "In research, an anthropologist's paramount responsibility is to those he studies. When there is a conflict of interest, these individuals must come first."
That principle, which was formalized in 1968, has led to what some anthropologists say amounts to a generational schism within the profession. Many anthropologists trained in the 1970's and 1980's were taught that their profession demanded an activist stand.
"I teach anthropologists in training," (anthropologist) Dr. Turner said, "that people have a right to their culture and that human rights concerns are inextricably bound up with being an anthropologist." But among those trained in earlier eras, more view their discipline as a pristinely scientific endeavor and see any activism on behalf of the people they study as something that is to be done independently of their professional work, if at all.
Dr. Greaves said, "Those who oppose anthropologists taking these stands argue that we're scientists, not activists." (Goleman, 1996: B8)
We situate our research in the tradition of anthropology's evolution toward greater levels of social engagement and practical application, and specifically chose the California Institute of Integral Studies' Social and Cultural Anthropology department for its emphasis on this type of anthropology. We feel that the debate between engaging in "science" and "activism" is an artificial one, as all social (and "hard science") research projects have agendas, biases, and political implications. Instead of attempting to establish credibility and power behind a mask of a "detached," "neutral science," we choose to be explicit about our biases and intentions to the best of our ability, that we might bring the benefit of clarity to our own research process, and help the reader to be more aware of the subjective sources of this work, and thereby be better able to critically interpret it. To the extent that we succeed with this approach, we will explore the boundaries of anthropology as both a rigorous art form, and a messy science.
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In this section of the literature review we will briefly explore the relationship between technology and culture by giving a concise overview of a few works and perspectives which we find most pertinent and illuminating for our work. Many works and approaches can perhaps be characterized by one of two perspectives (Sheppard, 1995): 1) technologies are neutral and objective tools designed for specific purposes; and 2) technologies emerge out of dynamic social processes, influenced by and influencing the culture from which it came. The first approach generally views technology as an applied science which inevitably leads to progress, and to the "development" and "evolution" of society. For the second approach, an understanding of the cultural background of the technology is just as important as an understanding of the stated purposes for its creation, or its technical specifications.
Anthropology is only just beginning to engage in an exploration of the transformation of society wrought by the emergence of recent information technologies. This exploration is informed by the second approach to technology - focusing on the dynamic interaction between culture and technology, and its nascence may be related to an only recent realization of technology's potential as culture crucible: Escobar (1994) suggests in his article "Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture," that "anthropologists might be particularly well prepared to understand these processes (involving the relationship of technology with culture) if they were to open up to the idea that science and technology are crucial arenas for the creation of culture in today's world" (Escobar, 1994: 211). Downey (1995) assert that one reason for this historical lack of anthropological sensitivity to the cultural importance of technology has been because,
Throughout its history, anthropological discourse has taken for granted a sharp distinction between the activities of society and the development of science and technology. That is, in contrast with cultural action in other social arenas, science and technology appear to develop according to their own internal logics within specialized technical communities whose deliberations are essentially opaque and presumably free of cultural content. (Downey, 1995: 265)
Suggesting the complex dynamics involved in this study and in anthropology's rapid evolution, Escobar also points out that "For anthropologists, inquiry into the nature of modernity as the background for current understanding and practice of technology is of paramount importance" (Escobar, 1994: 213). Thus, "The point of departure of this inquiry is the belief that any technology represents a cultural invention, in the sense that it brings forth a world; it emerges out of particular cultural conditions and in turn helps to create new ones" (Ibid: 211). Downey states it another way,
Cyborg anthropology ... (examines) the argument that human subjects and subjectivity are crucially as much a function of machines, machine relations, and information transfers as they are machine producers and operators. From this perspective, science and technology affect society through the fashioning of selves rather than as external forces. (Downey, 1995: 266)
The premises that technology is socially situated, and has social consequences, are essential insights which comprise one basic theoretical foundation of our research.
Anthropology since 1992 has formally involved itself as a discipline in a new area of study called "Cyborg Anthropology," through panels and special meetings within the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Escobar (1994) writes about this new field,
...the main goal of Cyborg Anthropology is the ethnographic study of the boundaries between humans and machines that are specific to late 20th century societies ... While nature, bodies, and organisms certainly have an organic basis, they are increasingly produced in conjunction with machines, and this production is always mediated by scientific narratives ("discourses" of biology, technology and the like) and by culture in general. Cyberculture must thus be understood as the overarching field of forces and meanings in which this complex production of life, labor, and language takes place. (Escobar, 1994: 216-217)
Anthropologist Matthew Bronson (1996) has contributed to this field in a recent article called "Cyberutopia or Cyberdistopia?"
It is no matter of argument that our society is in the midst of tumultuous change instigated largely by the increasing impact of information technology on the way we do business, form relationships with each other, live our lives. Much of the public discourse on the topic has tended to hyperbole of one form or another which has tended to obfuscate the real issues and make meaningful dialog increasingly problematic. The two dominant points of view might be summed up as: computing will be the death of us and computing will inevitably create, a far better world. (Bronson, 1995: 1)
Bronson suggests instead that we embrace "a balanced appreciation of both the promise and pitfalls of our headlong rush into the brave new world before us" (Ibid: 1). As two examples of the unanticipated consequences and potentials of technology's introduction, television, we are told by Rheingold (1993: 15), was hailed and promoted by intellectuals and journalists in the 1950's as an unprecedented tool for education; while the Internet, now serving many millions of civilians, began as a military-based communications network. These examples suggest the need for reflection and debate of both the "promise and pitfalls" of new technologies. Our own research tries to explore the opportunities GIS offers while continually seeking to illumine the potential dangers and pitfalls of implementing this technology.
A technology's design and subsequent use by another community raises important issues for research and understanding. Escobar emphasizes the importance of the human-computer interface in computer technologies, and maintains that thus far the field of "interface anthropology" has treated it "...narrowly...as a problem of engineering design which attempts to match the tasks to be performed with the tools at hand" (Escobar, 1994: 218).
The most recent American Anthropological Association meeting in Washington, DC. (1995: the 94th annual) included an arena for presentation and discussion of technological design, interface, and use. The main theme for the session was devoted to the exploration of the relationship between 'communities of technological practice' and the design of technology. Several papers addressed the importance of the interface between users and designers as one of the central issues underlying how human communities are being transformed by technology, and especially by communication technologies.
As engineers and other technical personnel engage in the work of designing new computer technologies, a complex interaction develops between those who design the technology, those who will use the technology, and the technology as a medium in and of itself. In this process, communities of technological practice arise which have their own values and structure. At one level, these communities have an impact upon the actual design of the technology, at the same time as the technology has an impact on the participants' conceptualization of community. (Session abstract 0-007, 1995 AAA Conference)
Stacia Zabusky's (1995) paper, "The Stupid User: Transparent Computers and Technical Communities in Non-technical Organizations" found that "the technician's effort is to make the computer infrastructure more and more transparent for the end user." Zabusky argues that this technical strategy does not have the effect of producing self-reliant producers but instead produces "stupid users." Lucy Suchman's (1995) presentation in the same conference session directly responded to Zabusky. In her paper, "Reconfiguring Networks of Technological Practice," Suchman proposes that "recent reconceptualizations of knowledges as multiple, partial, and situated offer a way to begin to replace the current designer/user opposition in technology production - an opposition that closes off possibilities for recognizing the subtle and profound differences that actually do divide us" (Suchman, 1995).
Escobar (1994: 218) argued that "the critical question of what the technology in question does to users and what it allows them to do is never raised." A year later Suchman (1995) begins to raise (and encourage action on) this issue when she writes, "By deliberately going against the logics that currently dominate job and technology design, we hope to contribute to disruptive and reconstructive interventions in to current configurations of technology production and use." This discussion is very relevant in understanding the possibilities and implications of a GIS produced out of a western worldview for an indigenous culture.
Howard Rheingold (1993) adds to this discussion of user/designer power and potential with particular emphasis on insights from his own personal experiences touring early virtual communities in his book: The Virtual Community - Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Rheingold has researched how communities coevolve with new technologies, and suggests that computer moderated communication (CMC) "enables people to do things with each other in new ways, and to do altogether new kinds of things - just as the telegraph, telephones, and television did" (Rheingold, 1993: 6). Rheingold insists that while new technologies do confer significant new potentials, they do not do so automatically:
The technology that makes virtual communities possible has the potential to bring enormous leverage to ordinary citizens at relatively little cost - intellectual leverage, social leverage, commercial leverage, and most important, political leverage. But the technology will not in itself fulfill that potential; this latent technical power must be used intelligently and deliberately by an informed population. (Ibid: 4)
Rheingold stresses the political implications of CMC, and points out that the role of communications media among citizens is important in the politics of a democratic society. Arguing that common people may have an historic window of opportunity to have influence over the use of communications technologies, Rheingold asserts that actions of today will determine the nature and control of communications technology in the future.
At a fundamental level, Rheingold suggests that what is really needed today is "a citizens' vision of the way technologies such as the net should grow, (for in its absence), the future will be shaped by large commercial and political power holders" (Ibid: 6) who are becoming fewer and more powerful as each day goes by. For Rheingold, nothing less than mass reality is at stake. "Access to influence other peoples' thoughts and perceptions is what is at stake. [And] Who has it and who doesn't have it is intimately connected to political power" (Ibid: 278).
Television, telegraphs, radios and computer networks are potent political tools because their function is not to manufacture or transport physical goods but to influence human beliefs and perceptions. As electronic entertainment has become increasingly "realistic" it has been used as an increasingly powerful propaganda device. (Ibid: 297)
Rheingold's main point here is that either common people take control of the communication systems that can connect them to each other and the world, or these will continue to be used to deceive and control them.
As a society we release very powerful forces when new technologies are developed and adopted. Most often we only learn about their broader consequences when we have become dependent on the technology itself and therefore have little chance for change. However, considering the importance of technology to the transformations and traumas of this century alone, we know surprisingly little about it. Schoenhoff (1993: 9) states this well: "The truth is that we still do not really understand technology in any depth - what impels its development or how it transforms our environments and our consciousness." Our research into GIS is dedicated to offering its insights to help remedy this lack of understanding.
Anthropology offers a good general theoretical foundation for the exploration of technology in general. We are focused on a specific technology that has basically not been explored by anthropologists, but we feel that this general theoretical foundation will be as useful for GIS as it is for television, telephones and information technology generally.
To summarize our ultimate purpose in adopting this theoretical position, we quote Escobar, speaking again about the larger cultural background of technology's creation.
"This background must be made explicit as a step towards reorienting the dominant tradition. Some see the ultimate purpose of this reorientation as contributing to the democratization of science and technology and to the development of technologies and technoliterate practices better suited to human use and human purposes than the present ones" (Escobar, 1994: 214).
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