2010 17th Annual Mini-Conf. on Critical Geography in Milwaukee
2010 AAG Annual Meeting in Washington D.C.
2008 AAG Annual Meeting in Boston
2007 AAG Annual Meeting in San Francisco
2006 AAG Annual Meeting in Chicago
Geography, Technology, Science
Critical Geography and GIS...
Situating Neogeography
Cyborg Spaces and Monstrous Places...
Governing Technologies...
Straddling the Fence...
Participatory GIS and online deliberative democracy...
Research design and methodologies for critical GIS research
Politics of Participatory GIS
2 0 1 0 . M i n i - C o n f . o n . C r i t i c a l . G e o g r a p h y
Critical Geography and GIS: A renewal of critical GIS?
November 2010
Organizers:
Matthew W. Wilson, Dept. of Geography, Ball State University
Rina Ghose, Dept. of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Panelists:
Patrick McHaffie, DePaul University
Francis Harvey, University of Minnesota
Carol Hanchette, University of Louisville
Rina Ghose, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Matthew W. Wilson, Ball State University
Paper presenters:
Patti Day, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Eric Lovell, Ohio University
Wen Lin, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Jerry Shannon, University of Minnesota
Falguni Mukherjee, Sam Houston State University
Call for participants:
With the proliferation of online, locative media marking a period of 'neogeography' and producing 'volunteered geographic information' and the 'geoweb', what is the role of a renewed, critical GIS? We invite both graduate students and faculty to participate in this discussion at the intersections of critical geography and GIS, across a broad range of scholarly activities, including: theories/concepts/frameworks, research designs and methodologies, practices and participatory engagements, and pedagogies. We are also interested in how new generations of critical geographers are using geographic technologies. More specifically, we hope this session draws critical geographers working with geographic technologies in fields such as:
- critical health and wellness studies,
- poverty studies,
- decision-making in local governments,
- population studies,
- privacy, ethics, and techno-positionalities,
- GIS use in development,
- studies of intersectionality,
- participatory GIS,
- qualitative GIS, etc.
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Geography, Technology, Science
November 2010
Organizers:
Matthew W. Wilson, Ball State University
Rebecca Lave, Indiana University
Panelists:
Becky Mansfield, The Ohio State University
Richard Donohue, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Garrett Graddy, University of Kentucky
Call for panelists:
How are critical geographers enrolling science and technology studies? What are the productive tensions and/or disabling irreducibles in practices, methodologies, and theories? We invite geographers interested in the intersections between geography and STS to participate in a panel discussion of questions such as: the interplay of physical, human, nonhuman, more-than-human geographies in the enrollment of STS within a critical geography agenda, theoretical/conceptual hybridities, histories/critiques of the geographical sciences from an STS perspective, STS methodologies in critical geographies, empirical cases exemplifying the interplay of STS and critical geography, etc.
2 0 1 0 . A A G . A n n u a l . M e e t i n g
Situating Neogeography
15 April 2010
Organizers:
Matthew W. Wilson, Dept. of Geography, Ball State University
Agnieszka Leszczynski, Dept. of Geography, U. of Washington
Chair: Sarah Elwood, Dept. of Geography, U. of Washington
Jin-Kyu Jung, U. of North Dakota, Revisiting Constructive Grounded Theory toward the reaction of Neogeography
Matt McCourt, U. of Maine Farmington, and Owen Dwyer, Indiana U-Purdue U-Indianapolis, Neogeographic Conversations: Situating and Sharing Students' Landscape Investigations
Agnieszka Leszczynski, U. of Washington, Neogeo as Neolib? Towards a Preliminary Political Economy of VGI
Wen Lin, U. of Wisconsin La Crosse, Emerging neogeographic practices in China: (new) spaces of participation and resistance?
Mark Graham, U. of Oxford, Paperclips, Plastic Buckets, and Pork Pies: Potentials for the Peer Production of Transparency
Call for presenters:
'Neogeography' (Turner 2006) and 'volunteered geographic information' (VGI) (Goodchild 2007) have raised the specter of Geography's own identity-crises. Accordingly, GIScientists and theoreticians have turned their attention to these emergent phenomena, seeking to account for their nascence. Early attempts to 'situate' VGI have overwhelmingly focused on the 'technical,' emphasizing changes in content delivery over the Web, the build-up of broadband infrastructure, and the rise of Web 2.0 applications for everything from blogging, to social networking, and making maps. While new media technologies have allowed the rapid collection and delivery of spatial information on a diversity of computing platforms including mobile technologies, their inception and proliferation does not occur in a social vacuum. As per culture and new media theorist Henry Jenkins (2004), the technological shifts evidenced as part of 'new media' and Where/Web 2.0 are always preceded by the cultural.
Thus beyond a pronounced series of technological shifts, 'neo-geo' constitutes, and is implicated in, changes to the cultural sphere, capital, and commodity flows. Moreover, it involves a fundamental shift in geographic knowledge production and practice. The boundaries between expert and amateur, artist and scientist, and author and audience are increasingly the substance of new mappings.
In this session, we consider the multiple ways in which new practices around emergent geospatial information technologies are situated -- asking not only how geographical knowledges are given meaning in this representative moment, but how, more diffusely, the practices of mapping have themselves come to be, and are made meaningful.
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Cyborg Spaces and Monstrous Places:
Critical Geographic Engagements with Harawayian Theory
15 April 2010
Organizers:
Maureen Hickey Putnam, Dept. of Geography, U. of Washington
Matthew W. Wilson, Dept. of Geography, Ball State University
Panelists:
Emma Jane Roe, Bristol University
Traci Warkentin, Hunter College, City University of New York
James Craine, California State University-Northridge
Ann Oberhauser, West Virginia University
Leesa Fawcett, York University
Matthew Gandy, University College London
Call for panelists:
"[The] subjects are cyborg, nature is coyote, and the geography is elsewhere." - Donna Haraway
Donna Haraway's contribution to the theorization of feminist, post-structural and radical geographies has been immense, and critical scholars working across the spectrum have drawn on her work as part of larger projects rethinking the epistemological and ontological foundations of modern geography. The purpose of this session is to bring together a diverse field of geographers who are currently engaging with Haraway's work. We hope to foster this conference space in order to share research and to grapple with the possibilities and limitations of Harawayian thought as it has and continues to open up new spaces across the discipline -- both theoretically and practically. To that end we welcome panelists that engage with any aspect of Haraway's work, and encourage participation from a wide variety of geographic sub-fields, including, but not limited to: anti-essentialist feminist research praxis, cyborg politics, relational ontologies, hybrid epistemologies, impure landscapes, god-trickery, inappropriate/d others, companion species, and human/techno-bio-nature-science relationships.
2 0 0 8 . A A G . A n n u a l . M e e t i n g
Governing Technologies:
Representation, Participation, and Governance in the 'Digital Age'
19 April 2008
Organizers:
Matthew Wilson, Dept. of Geography, U. of Washington
Kevin Ramsey, Dept. of Geography, U. of Washington
Session 1:
Chair: Matthew W. Wilson, U. of Washington
Michael W. Longan, Valparaiso University, How Cities in Northwest Indiana Use the World Wide Web for Representation, Participation, and e-Government
John Saunders, York University, Digital Subjects and the Technological City: Universalism and Ubiquity Reconsidered
Jason Speck, U. of Nevada-Reno, Wiki Theology
Richard Donohue, U. of Wisconsin-Madison, Digital Mapping Technologies: Implications for Knowledge Spaces
Kim Cordingly, West Virginia University, Disability, Flexibility, and Work in the 'Digital Age': How Technology Is Reshaping Home Workplaces and Subjectivities of Women with Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Session 2:
Chair: Kevin Ramsey, U. of Washington
Jeremy Crampton, Georgia State University, MoveOn.org, Blogs and the New Progressive Cartographies of Politics
Jacob J. Peters, U. of Southern California, Thinking Code: reading the limits of difference?
Sarah Starkweather, U. of Washington, The persistence of paper: voting from abroad in "the digital age"
Sam Kinsley, U. of Bristol, Laying claim to technological futures - does anticipation foment control? Exploring the case of ubiquitous computing development
Matthew W. Wilson, U. of Washington, Technoscientific subjectivation: Theorizing the use of geographic information technologies
Sponsorships:
Political Geography Specialty Group
Urban Geography Specialty Group
Call for presenters:
Advances in computing technologies are enabling both the decentralized proliferation and disciplined coordination of representational practices. Google mashups, wikimaps, sharing of georeferenced media, as well as the introduction of new social networking (cyber)spaces, online gaming systems, architectural design practices, and personal surveillance systems are a few examples of ways in which new citizens of the 'digital age' are re-representing their personal, social, and material environments, and in doing so constituting new spaces for geographic investigation. This paper session explores how these developments are shaping our participation and implication in processes of governance and governmentality, as well as how, in turn, these new forms of governance are shaping practices of representation and participation.
More specifically this call is seeking papers which articulate these co-constitutive processes of representation, participation, and governance, realizing that certain papers may emphasize one of these themes over others. For instance, we are interested in the variety of geographic research around new media, cyberspace, videogames, surveillance and military systems, as well as geographic information and remote sensing systems, and the ways in which these objects of study contribute to broader theorization of political, cultural, urban, feminist geographies of the so called 'digital age'. We encourage contributors from perspectives in feminist, political, cultural, and urban geography, as well as those in critical GIS or science and technology studies more generally, to:
* offer theoretical re-framings or re-viewings of how representation, participation, and governance has changed with the so called 'digital age';
* present empirical findings demonstrating these co-constitutive systems of representation, participation, and governance;
* challenge the apparent 'newness' of these shifts, to re-historicize the emergence of systems of representation, participation, and governance; and/or
* articulate methodological considerations for conducting research with or about these digital technologies.
Please contact co-organizers Matthew Wilson and Kevin Ramsey if you are interested in participating in this paper session. In your email, please propose a paper title including a short description.
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'Straddling the Fence' I:
Theory, Practice, and History in Critical GIS
17 April 2008
Organizers:
Matthew Wilson,
Dept. of Geography, U. of Washington
Barbara Poore, USGS
Paper Session Chair:
David O'Sullivan, Geog. and Env. Science, U. of Auckland
Paper Presenters:
Patrick McHaffie, DePaul University, The Technology War, the Magical Aeroplane, and the Shift to Photogrammetry in American Public Sector Mapmaking
Miriam Cope, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Theory and Identities of Participatory GIS
Dalia Varanka, USGS, Topographic Mapping Ontologies Derived from U.S. Geological Survey Topographic Mapping Feature Inventories
Jin-Kyu Jung, U. of N. Dakota, Qualitative Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as Mixed-Method Research
Panel Discussant:
Eric S. Sheppard, U. of Minnesota
Panelists:
Francis Harvey
Mei-Po Kwan
David O'Sullivan
Marianna Pavlovskaya
Nadine Schuurman
Call for panelists/presenters:
This paper session and follow-up panel draw on last year's successful series of AAG sessions titled "Research design and methodologies for critical GIS research." Keyed to Michael Goodchild's remarks that young researchers would be wise to straddle the fence between human geography and GIS, the paper session will present the work of researchers who are doing critical research in the study of geographic information technology use. The panel session that follows will reflect on current directions and prospects for critical GIS research. We are interested in considering David O'Sullivan's (2006) recent Progress report on critical GIS which highlights the importance of active practice in developing critical GIS theory and calls on researchers to pay more attention to the social history and political economy of GIS as a technology. We are interested in reviewing and evaluating these suggestions and invite others to reflect on the degree to which O'Sullivan's article appropriately captures the various 'crises' for those doing critical GIS research, or for those just beginning to engage critically with GIS development and its various deployments.
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Participatory GIS and online deliberative democracy:
Reflections on a field experiment
16 April 2008
Organizers:
Matthew Wilson, Dept. of Geography, U. of Washington
Kevin Ramsey, Dept. of Geography, U. of Washington
Chair:
Keiron Bailey, U. of Arizona
Panelists:
Kevin Ramsey, U. of Washington
Matthew W. Wilson, U. of Washington
Martin Swobodzinski, San Diego State University
Piotr Jankowski, San Diego State University
Timothy L. Nyerges, U. of Washington
In Fall 2007, over 200 residents of the Seattle metropolitan area convened online for a 4-week long experiment in online deliberative democracy called "Let's Improve Transportation" (LIT). Participants were asked to imagine they are a member of a large citizen advisory committee charged with providing policy makers with their recommendations regarding the make-up of a regional transportation funding ballot measure. Their task was to collectively determine which proposed transportation improvement projects to build and which funding mechanisms (such as taxes or bridge tolls) should be used to pay for these improvements. This field experiment, and the Internet technology developed to support the experiment, were part of a 4-year NSF funded research project called Participatory GIS for Transportation (PGIST). Six researchers associated with the project (from University of Washington and San Diego State University) will informally discuss their reflections on the experiment, including:
* the challenges of creating and facilitating a field experiment in the context of a "real world" political debate,
* results of preliminary quantitative and qualitative analysis of the experiment data and outcomes,
* their experiences with collaborative development and research, as well as
* the use of system interaction research methods with more qualitative interviewing techniques.
2 0 0 7 . A A G . A n n u a l . M e e t i n g
Research design and methodologies
for critical GIS research
Organizers:
Matthew Wilson, Dept. of Geography, U. of Washington
Kevin Ramsey, Dept. of Geography, U. of Washington
Specialty Group Sponsorships:
Geographic Informaiton Science and Systems
Qualitative Research
Panelists:
Stuart C. Aitken, San Diego State University
Michael P. Brown, University of Washington
Jeremy Crampton, Georgia State University
Vincent J. Del Casino, Jr., California State U.-Long Beach
Sarah Elwood, University of Washington
Rina Ghose, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Stephen Hanna,
University of Mary Washington
Francis Harvey, University of Minnesota
LaDona Knigge, California State U.-Chico
Lawrence Knopp, Jr., University of Minnesota-Duluth
Nadine Schuurman, Simon Fraser University
Presenters for Paper Session 1:
Chair: Karen Culcasi, Syracuse University
Matthew W. Wilson, U. of Washington, Learning to laugh at ourselves: Approaching GIS critique from the 'inside'
Wen Lin, U. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Making sense of GIS construction in a non-western world
Fletcher Chmara-Huff, Ohio State, Making room for the indigenous in western space
Eli Moore, Syracuse University, Research and mapping in a context of conflict: The parallel relevance of participatory action research principles
Kevin Ramsey, U. of Washington, A call for agonism: GIS and the politics of collaboration
Presenters for Paper Session 2:
Chair: Rina Ghose, U. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Hamid Ekbia, Indiana University, Changing GIS to accommodate change: A technical-critical approach
Jin-Kyu Jung, University at Buffalo, Computer-Aided Qualitative GIS (CAQ-GIS): A new aproach to qualitative GIS
Brian Thayer, U. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Developing a Community Information System (CIS) to assist neighborhood revitalization efforts: Case study of the Harambee community, Milwaukee, WI
Ingrid Nelson, U. of Oregon, Participatory GIS: Possibilities and limitations in Mozambique
Falguni Mukherjee, U. Wisconsin-Milwaukee, GIS and spatial technologies for urban governance
Call for panelists/presenters:
"Critical GIS" can be defined as work that critically examines how practices of GIS and mapping are fundamentally political, including work that interrogates the social and political implications of the practice of GIS in spatial governance. Two recent special journal issues, Cartographica (Harvey, Kwan, and Pavlovskaya 2005) and ACME (Harris and Harrower 2006), as well as work from scholars across the discipline (including, Harley 1989; Pickles 1995, 2004; Aitken and Michel 1995; Crampton 2001, 2003; Schuurman 2000, 2004; Kwan 2002b, 2002a; Curry 1998; Sparke 1998; Elwood 2006; Brown and Knopp 2006), demonstrate the wide breadth of theoretical approaches used to critically examine GIS and cartography in practice and (in some cases) to construct an agenda for critical cartographic and GIS research. However, to date, there has been very little work that critically reflects upon the unique theoretical and methodological challenges and problematics of conducting critical GIS research.
Therefore, this panel session will explore these challenges from a variety of perspectives both within and outside the traditionally-defined GIS community. In particular we are interested in exploring the following kinds of questions:
o What is critical GIS research, and what are the unique epistemological, theoretical, and methodological challenges/problematics of conducting this kind of research?
o What research designs and/or methodologies are appropriate for, or particular to, critical GIS and cartographic research?
o What are the potential contradictions and conflicts for integrating multiple and different epistemologies in GIS knowledge production and representation?
o What are the benefits and limitations of the singular ethnographic case study, and how might critical GIS research expand upon or move beyond this often-used methodology?
o What are successful ways of incorporating multiple methods in critical GIS research?
o When are participatory/action research approaches most appropriate and what are the unique challenges of implications of adopting such an approach?
o How can critical GIS researchers negotiate their often hinged positionality as researcher/collaborator/technical specialist?
2 0 0 6 . A A G . A n n u a l . M e e t i n g
Politics of Participatory GIS
9 March 2006
Co-sponsored by the GIS Specialty Group and
the Political Geography Specialty Group
Despite the fact that participatory GIS (PGIS) initiatives are largely intended to assist a 'public' in engaging in highly politicized decision-making situations, such as neighborhood planning and resource management, there seems to be an ambivalence among PGIS scholars
toward conceptualizing the politics of participation. Recent work by political geographers, particularly exploring citizenship, representation, and the constitutive quality of political struggle, has much to offer our understanding of the implications of GIS for 'participation' in a democratic society. Two sessions are being organized to address these under-examined connections between PGIS and political geography. The first session will feature a collection of papers that explicitly engage with the notion of politics in the context of PGIS initiatives. The second session will feature a panel discussion on these and related topics.
*Politics of Participatory GIS I (Paper Session)*
Organizers:
Matthew Wilson and Tim Nyerges
University of Washington
Chair: Rina Ghose, University of Wisconsin
Presenters:
Laxmi Ramasubramanian, University of Illinois-Chicago, "The Politics of Risk Communication: Advocating a Bottom-Up Approach to Policymaking"
Kevin Ramsey, "Re-imagining citizenship through participatory GIS: A report of findings from interviews with potential PGIS users"
Matthew Wilson, "On producing an 'us' and 'them': imagining community as "half-empty" in the context of a participatory GIS"
Peter A.K. Kyem, Central Connecticut State University, "Technological Intervention and Institutional Change: Mediating Power Relations to Facilitate Community Empowerment through Participatory GIS Applications"
Jonnell Allen, Syracuse University, with Jane M. Read and Don Mitchell, "Community Geography: Navigating the Politics of Participation in Syracuse, New York"
*Politics of Participatory GIS II (Panel Session)*
Organizers:
Kevin Ramsey and Tim Nyerges
University of Washington
Chair: Matthew Wilson, University of Washington
Panelists:
Keiron Bailey, University of Arizona
Meghan Cope, SUNY-Buffalo
Sarah Elwood, University of Arizona
Rina Ghose, University of Wisconsin
Kevin Ramsey, University of Washington
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