GIS CritiqueGIS CritiqueJohn StudleyNov 2004It has been
suggested, however that a dichotomy exists whereby GIS can act to
both empower and marginalise communities simultaneously and that it
is contradictory when used for grassroots or community forms of
development Yapa 1991, Harris et al 1995, Weiner et al 1995,
Rundstrum 1995 In spite of concerns raised by some social theorists
Harris and Weiner 1996, 1998 about the negative impacts of GIS on
society, others see liberating elements in indigenous
societies.Representatives of indigenous and local communities are
using GIS as a means of advocacy, inclusion, participation and
recognition Jarvis and Stearman 1995, Nietschmann 1995
through:-incorporating local knowledge into participatory land
reform Harris et al 1995 its use in collaborative forest management
Kyem 1997 assisting communities to redefine themselves and
territories Beltgens 1995 its use in codifying knowledge about land
rights and resources Forbes 1995 raising the profile of IK so it is
used in decision-making Bird 1995 Fisher 1994 To these GIS
exponents the technology provides a critical complement to efforts
being made to empower group struggles to impact politics and effect
a meaningful change in their lives.On the other hand the
involvement of local community groups with a complex technology
such as GIS has been viewed with apprehension and concern and a
contradiction Taylor 1991, Yapa 1991 because of its high cost,
level of expertise and its failings as an AT Yapa 1991 it is
founded on the concept of absolute space Also known as Cartesian or
Newtonian space and an instrumentalist mode of reasoning Peuquet
1994, Yapa 1998 of the perceived positivism and hegemonic power
relations embedded within GISof its claimed value-neutral and
objective nature Openshaw 1991, 1992 of the privileging and
inequalities of data and facts Goodchild 1991 of undemocratic and
differential access to data and technology Pickles 1991 of its
surveillant capabilities in terms of knowledge engineering and
control Pickles 1991 of the commodification and bureaucratization
of data Crampton 1995 of the intrusive role of geodemographics
Curry 1994 of structural knowledge distortion Taylor 1991 of
concerns over the ethical and responsible use of GIS Wright et al
1997 of the limitations of digital representations of the world/map
as a metaphorof the failures of GIS epistemologies to represent
multiples realities of spaceof the cultural bias of the technology
Rundstrum 1995 of its failure to represent alternative forms of
knowledge and qualitative dataof the pre-eminence of boolean logic
in GIS applications Sheppard 1995 of the danger that IK will be
transformed by the logic of the technology which will further
disenfranchise indigenous peopleof rhetorical claims that GIS will
foster grassroots participation and empowerment when in reality it
may serve to legitimize policies and projects that will have the
opposite effect Harris and Weiner ndSome have suggested a number of
approaches to reduce the negative and contradictory nature of GIS
including:- Improved Community integration, more appropriate
software technologies, and the inclusion of a post-structural
object-orientated approach and some features of IT theoryIn order
to improve community-integration GIS mustrecognize expert and
indigenous understandings of local landscapefacilitate socially
appropriate land userecognize the contradictory condition of the
technology and the political economy of data, hardware and
expertise accessrealistically attempt to conceptualise the
struggles and aspiration of indigenous communitiesrecognize that
communities are socially differentiatedrecognize that
community-integrated GIS is conflictual as hegemonic
interpretations of landscapes are challengedrecognize that the
GIS-empowerment-marginalization nexus can only be understood within
the political context of spatial decision-making in a particular
placeIn order to make the technology more appropriate and available
there is a need torelax the proprietary rights over existing GIS
softwaredevelop public domain GISdevelop low-cost software for GIS
such as IDRISI and MAP develop software that takes advantage of the
existing software infrastructure in the developing worldestablish a
strong local information system where peoples participation, IK and
GIS function in mutually complementary waysIn order to adopt a
post-structuralist object-orientated and IT approach Yapa 1998
Sarup 1988 to IK, GIS exponents need to:-recognize that objects of
study are discursively constructed and the need to dissolve the
authority of subject/object dualism. gain emancipation from
Cartesian space, past technology, past disciplinary affiliations
and methodology Pickes 1991, Yapa 1998 embrace post-structuralist
views of objects, social theory and embeddednessengage more
rigorously with geographical method, epistemology and ontology,
social theories of mapping and the substantive content and contexts
of spatial objectsformulate a logic of relational space GIS is
founded on a logic of Cartesian space, but for it to produce useful
indigenous knowledge we need to formulate a logic of relational
space. Object-orientated GIS appears promising in this respect (See
Peuquet 1994). It is based on context dependency where the distance
between two points may have different metrics for different users.
Representations of time and space can be absolute or relative. In
the absolute view space is composed of points, time is composed of
instants and both exist independent of the objects that occupy
time-space. In the relative view of time-space, both space and time
are positional qualities that are attached to each object. The
absolute view focuses on space-time as the subject matter, in
contrast, the relative view focuses on objects with space and time
measured as relationships between these objects (Yapa 1998) and a
logic of process Peuquet 1994 examine IK in greater substantive
detail on the basis of an IT conceptual system that is web-like,
non-hierarchical, multilinear, hypertextual, decentered and
contextual Landow 1992 Yapa 1998
