introduction:

Maps and society are co-constitutive. This is the general argument (argued differently) within the sets of literatures, authors, and audiences I term, “Cartography, GIS, and Society”. This is not to also say, in a conclusive sense, that maps are social constructions – a theoretical and empirical crossroad I approach in my research. Rather, critical and public participation GIS are the artifacts through which I become interested in mappings, co-constructions of space, and the discursive and material reconfigurations of bodies, identities, practices, and associations (which may be understood as ‘society’). My intention in this area of research interest is not necessarily to again, exhaustively, re-write the history of these technologies, but instead to inspect the tradition of history-writing in studies of GIS. The re-presentation of these histories of GIS and cartography (dis)enables the possibilities for a GIS in the present. My immediate purpose in this statement is to briefly overview the contributions of these histories. Less immediately, I intend to recover various fissures and sutures in GIS in an effort to relearn and reconfigure motivations to develop new geographic information technologies and, therefore, new ways of representing and intervening in the changing role of governance.

emphases:

The history of cartography would seemingly begin before that of geographic information systems; although telling the story of one would be absent without the other (Crampton and Krygier 2005) .   My interest, as with many in critical GIS, is at the period of time when GIS and the tools of automated cartography exploded on the scene in governmental, nongovernmental and nonprofit, as well as for-profit organizations.   Interestingly, during this same time period of the 1980s/1990s, cartography and GIS became the subject of heated debate within disciplinary geography.   It seems that just as various organizations were zealously deploying GIS, critical geographers were waiving red flags of caution.   My interest is in re-consideration of these cautionary flags of critique and the interventions, such as participatory GIS, which have emerged.   In doing so, I draw inspiration from Foucauldian approaches to construct histories of the present - in this case a history of geographic information technologies as they are currently practiced, understood through the critical-historical lens of the not-so-distant past.

Critiques/Histories of Cartography and GIS:   Critical cartography is the study of mapmaking and map use, to critically interrogate the ways in which the map belies interest, precedes the territory, or simply lies (key interventions include Wood 1992; King 1996; Monmonier 1996) .   J.B. Harley (1989) frames the debate for many within critical cartography, and influences the work of John Pickles (1995; 2004) and Jeremy Crampton (2001; 2002; 2003; 2004) , major contributors (provocateurs) to later fields as critical GIS and critical cyberspace studies.   The field of GIS and Society draws upon critical cartography, but further worries the rapid systematization and automation of geographic information, challenges geographers to consider the excess and implications of GIS development and implementation, and encourages a revisioning of a critical GIS and the practices the technology entails (key interventions include Pickles 1995, a special issue of Cartography and GIS 1995, 22:1, edited by Sheppard and Poiker, and Schuurman 1999) .   Public participation GIS (including participatory GIS, collaborative GIS, GIS and group decision-making, although recognizing the different disciplinary threads represented by each) emerges from within critical GIS and GIS and Society, as both a response to critiques and critics of GIS and as a recognition of the empowering potential of this technology for certain groups (interventions include Nyerges, Barndt, and Brooks 1997; a special issue of Cartography and GIS, 1998, 25:2, edited by Obermeyer; Craig, Harris, and Weiner 2002) .

The critique of GIS has been waged and received differently.   This critique, broadly understood, has been epistemological, or debates about fundamental assumptions about what can be known, (Taylor 1990; Openshaw 1991, 1992; Taylor and Overton 1991; Clark 1992; Lake 1993; Pickles 1995; Aitken and Michel 1995; Rundstrom 1995) , ontological, or debates about what is constituted by such knowledges, (Chrisman 1987, 2005; Pickles 1995, 1997; Wright, Goodchild, and Proctor 1997; Curry 1998; Kwan 2002b, 2002a; Schuurman and Pratt 2002; Schuurman 1999, 2005, 2006; Poore and Chrisman 2006) , as well as technical-processural, or in what 'appropriate' ways knowledge can be produced - in some ways bracketing epistemological-ontological critiques, (Nyerges 1989, 1991; Macgill 1990; Yapa 1991; Nyerges and Jankowski 1997; Obermeyer 1998; Harris and Weiner 1998; Elwood and Leitner 1998; Barndt 1998; Craig and Elwood 1998; Ramasubramanian 1999; Talen 2000; Kyem 2002; Craig, Harris, and Weiner 2002) .   Admittedly these various critiques are, to some extent, in conversation with each other, and yet there remains the need for further definition of how these critiques can contribute to specific research agendas (Sheppard 1995, 2005) .

Public Participation GIS:   Public participation GIS (PPGIS) can be understood as range of activities (described as web-based GIS, collaborative GIS, participatory GIS, group-based GIS), but seems originally understood as a response ('GIS/2') to the widespread organizational (or top-down driven) use of GIS as well as the emerging critique that GIS was limited in its representational ability and was unable to incorporate the concerns of those affected by its use (Schroeder 1996; Nyerges, Barndt, and Brooks 1997; overview in Sieber 2006) .   A special issue in Cartography and Geographic Information Systems , edited by Nancy Obermeyer (1998) , sets out a diversity of research agendas, couched by Eric Sheppard's (1995) call to widen the space for discussing the "social imbeddedness and impact of GIS" (5).   This CAGIS special issue (25:2) represents a key articulation of PPGIS in the academy, including: a re-conceptualization of the potential for GIS to be empowering and marginalizing (Harris and Weiner 1998) , an extension of the notion of 'access' to include awareness and applicability (Elwood and Leitner 1998) , a description of multimedia 'augmentation' of spatial information (Shiffer 1998) , a consideration of how community groups use GIS (Craig and Elwood 1998) , a recognition of the challenges to participatory uses of GIS outside of 'technical' barriers (Barndt 1998) , and a critical analysis of the use of GIS in the non-Western world, amid processes of globalization (Stonich 1998) .   Many of these initial PPGIS articles later become part of a large edited collection by Will Craig, Trevor Harris and Dan Weiner (2002) - the subject of a discursive analysis within my MA thesis, which challenged the ambiguous (but influential) roles that 'community' and 'power' played in the formation of PPGIS (Wilson 2005) .

From these early conceptualizations of alternative GIS, three efforts articulate current thought in PPGIS: the development of web-based GIS (Peng 1999, 2001; Carver et al. 2001; Rinner 2001; Kingston 2002; Dragicevic 2004; Nyerges, Ramsey, and Wilson 2006) , the development and evaluation of collaborative approaches to GIS (Jankowski et al. 1997; Jankowski and Nyerges 2001; Nyerges and Jankowski 1997; Harrison and Haklay 2002; Haklay and Tobón 2003; Nyerges et al. 2006; Dragicevic and Balram 2006) , and the support and analysis of community groups who actively employ existing geographic information technologies (Leitner et al. 2000; Ghose 2001; Harris and Weiner 2002; Ghose 2003; Elwood and Leitner 2003; Kyem 2004).

New directions and convergences in critical participatory GIS:   Recent work in critical GIS has emphasized critical perspectives within participatory GIS projects (Warren 2004; Sheppard 2005; Elwood 2006a, 2006b; Parker 2006; Kwan 2007; Brown and Knopp forthcoming; Ramsey and Wilson forthcoming; Ramsey forthcoming) .   These authors engage in participatory research with communities while remaining "relentless reflexive" as to their roles in these activities (Sheppard 2005: 13) .   Additionally, these authors challenge efforts within participatory GIS to measure 'empowerment' through technology use, contributing to continued discussions about 'empowerment' (Harris and Weiner 1998; Elwood 2002; Laituri 2003) .   New directions in critical GIS include further connections drawn between participatory GIS and critical (political, feminist, queer, body) geographies.

ongoing research:

[coming soon]

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