Operating anew: Queering GIS with good enough software

In the last decade, conversations around queering of GIScience emerged. Drawing on literature from feminist and queer critical GIS, with special attention to the under‐examined political economy of GIS, I suggest that the critical project of queering all of GIS, both GIScience and GISystems, requires not just recognition of the labour and lives of queers and research in geographies of sexualities. Based upon a queer feminist political economic critique and evidenced in my teaching critical GIS at two elite liberal arts colleges, I argue that the “status quo” between ESRI and geography as a field must be interrupted. Extending a critical GIS focus beyond data structures and data ethics, I argue that geographic researchers and instructors have a responsibility in queering our choice and production of software, algorithms, and code alike. I call this production and choice of democratic, accessible, and useful software by, for, and about the needs of its users, good enough software.     

Our GIS is too small

GIScience and GISystems have been successful in tackling many geographical problems over the last 30 years. But technologies and associated theory can become limiting if they end up defining how we see the world and what we believe are worthy and tractable research problems. This paper explores some of the limitations currently impacting GISystems and GIScience from the perspective of technology and community, contrasting GIScience with other informatics communities and their practices. It explores several themes: (i) GIScience and the informatics revolution; (ii) the lack of a community‐owned innovation platform for GIScience research; (iii) the computational limitations imposed by desktop computing and the inability to scale up analysis; (iv) the continued failure to support the temporal dimension, and especially dynamic processes and models with feedbacks; (v) the challenge of embracing a wider and more heterogeneous view of geographical representation and analysis; and (vi) the urgent need to foster an active software development community to redress some of these shortcomings. A brief discussion then summarizes the issues and suggests that GIScience needs to work harder as a community to become more relevant to the broader geographic field and meet a bigger set of representation, analysis, and modelling needs.     

Reimagining GIScience for relational spaces

A mismatch between largely absolute Newtonian models of space in GIScience and the relational spaces of critical human geography has contributed to mutual disinterest between the fields. Critical GIS has offered an intellectual critique of GIScience without substantially altering how particular key geographical concepts are expressed in data structures. Although keystone ideas in GIScience such as Tobler's “First Law” and the modifiable areal unit problem speak to enduring concerns of human geography, they have drawn little interest from that field. Here, we suggest one way to reformulate the computational approach to the region for relational space, so that regions emerge not through proximity in an absolute space or similarities in intensive properties, but according to their similarities in relations. We show how this might operate theoretically and empirically, working through three illustrative examples. Our approach gestures toward reformulating key terms in GIScience like distance, proximity, networks, and spatial building blocks such as the polygon. Re‐engaging the challenges of representing geographical concepts computationally can yield new kinds of GIS and GIScience resonant with theoretical ideas in human geography, and also lead to critical human geographic practices less antagonistic to computation.     

Reproducible Science Is Vital for a Stronger Evidence Base During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Reproducible research becomes even more imperative as we build the evidence base on SARS-CoV-2 epidemiology, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. In his study, Paez assessed the reproducibility of COVID-19 research during the pandemic, using a case study of population density. He found that most articles that assess the relationship of population density and COVID-19 outcomes do not publicly share data and code, except for a few, including our paper, which he stated “illustrates the importance of good reproducibility practices”. Paez recreated our analysis using our code and data from the perspective of spatial analysis, and his new model came to a different conclusion. The disparity between our and Paez’s findings, as well as other existing literature on the topic, give greater impetus to the need for further research. As there has been near exponential growth of COVID-19 research across a wide range of scientific disciplines, reproducible science is a vital component to produce reliable, rigorous, and robust evidence on COVID-19, which will be essential to inform clinical practice and policy in order to effectively eliminate the pandemic.     

Contesting Neoliberal Urbanism in Glasgow's Community Gardens: The Practice of DIY Citizenship

In this journal, it has been suggested that citizens practising community gardening “can become complicit in the construction of neoliberal hegemony”. Such hegemony is maintained, it is argued, through the day‐to‐day work of neoliberal citizen‐subjects, which “alleviates the state from service provision”. In this paper we acknowledge that community gardens are vulnerable to neoliberal cooptation. But, even where neoliberal practices are evidenced, such practices do not define or foreclose other socio‐political subjectivities at work in the gardens. We contend that community gardens in Glasgow cultivate collective practices that offer us a glimpse of what a progressively transformative polity can achieve. Enabled by an interlocking process of community and spatial production, this form of citizen participation encourages us to reconsider our relationships with one another, our environment and what constitutes effective political practice. Inspired by a range of writings on citizenship formation we term this “Do‐It‐Yourself” (DIY) Citizenship.     

18th‐Century pacific voyages of discovery, “big science”, and the shaping of an European scientific and technological culture

Abstract

The European exploration of the Pacific Ocean in the latter half of the eighteenth century is usually presented as part of the Enlightenment's quest for pure knowledge, knowledge which was shared freely in the “Republic of Letters”. In this essay, however, these expeditions are set against the background of a ferocious struggle between western European states to dominate the world, bringing together national political, commercial, military, and learned institutions, showing them to be more akin to today's “big science” than to an activity of free‐minded, autonomous, gentlemen. The holistic approach developed to apprehend “big science” in today's world is thus used to reexamine scientific cooperation as well as the circulation of men, objects, texts (including maps) and ideas in the politico‐economic context of early modern Britain, France and Holland, the relationship between this “big science” and eighteenth‐century, western European society, and how these shaped European scientific culture and identity. The paper ends with some reflections on the contrast between “big scientific” activity in the two periods.     

The Ethics of Philanthropy

Abstract

This essay considers the ancient antecedents to the “new field” of the ethics of philanthropy, arguing that key questions such as “to whom should we give our money?” have already been explored by ancient authors and that the answers they give to these questions can be quite different to the answers given by contemporary scholars. By analysing the treatment of giving in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Cicero’s De Officiis, and Seneca’s De Beneficiis, I argue that the focus of ancient thinkers upon giving within one’s own community can be viewed as a possible response to a number of issues that have been raised by modern scholars, including the “problem of acting at a distance” and the “problem of accountability.” Moreover, these ancient thinkers have additional, positive reasons for thinking that philanthropy should take place within one’s own community, based upon their ideas of man’s natural duty to his political community, and the social benefits that can be derived from local philanthropy. The integration of ancient perspectives, then, into these modern debates, can serve to complement and broaden research in this emerging field.     

Is obsidian sourcing about geochemistry or archaeology? A reply to Speakman and Shackley

The response from Speakman and Shackley to my paper highlights a number of important issues currently facing archaeological sourcing research. Many of these issues, however, have little to do with HHpXRF itself and more to do with an artificial crisis triggered by specialists' concerns about a hitherto restricted technique becoming available to a wider community. Despite their mantra of “validity and reliability,” Speakman and Shackley erroneously equate these two concepts with the accuracy of an instrument's measurements. Additionally, they mischaracterise a self-contained test, conducted with specific parameters (i.e., “off-the-shelf” operation), as an endeavour to facilitate or endorse poor-quality data. Paradoxically, their disparagement of experimental internal consistency as “silliness” is incongruous with their own data. Furthermore, a discussion focused on handheld instruments is obfuscated by their inclusion of desktop instruments that are “portable” only in the sense of luggable to an electrical outlet in a laboratory context. Most troubling is that they envision themselves as the arbiters of science vs. “playing scientist.” Contrary to their claims, HHpXRF proliferation will improve reproducibility and archaeological results.     

Statistical Perspectives on Geographic Information Science

Statistical geometry applies probabilistic methods to geometric forms. In the early days of the quantitative revolution statistical geometry appeared to provide a useful framework for geographic research, but its value appeared to decline in the 1970s and 1980s. Geographic information science (GIScience) addresses the fundamental issues underlying the geographic information technologies, and statistical geometry has proven valuable in a number of respects. Several classical results from statistical geometry are useful in the design of geographic information systems, and in understanding and modeling uncertainty in geographic information, and several statistical principles are observed to be generally applicable to geographic information. Modeling uncertainty in area-class maps has proven particularly difficult, and seven possible models are discussed. Statistical geometry provides an important link between the early work of the quantitative revolution in geography and modern research in GIScience.     

Pourquoi seules les villes sont-elles qualifiées d'intelligentes? Un vocabulaire du biais urbain

Since 2010, the term “smart city” has become a buzzword, used in a vague way to denote the increasing integration of information technology into city management processes and to describe the social and community processes they enable. The adjective “smart” is, however, only applied to cities: by implication non-cities (i.e., rural and peripheral regions) are not smart. In this paper we describe how the term “smart city” is used, and show that processes similar to those that make cities smart also occur outside cities. Reserving the term “smart” for cities therefore reflects a bias, similar to the bias that associates creativity and innovation with cities. As geographers we have become aware of our colonial and sexist biases: in this paper we argue that our urban bias is alive and well, and call attention to it.     

Sites,sacredness, and stories: Interactions of archaeology and contemporary paganism

Folklore has, until very recently, been at the fringes of archaeological research. Post-processual archaeology has promoted plurality in interpretation, however, and archaeology more widely is required to make itself relevant to contemporary society; so, contemporary folkloric practices vis-a`-vis archaeological remains are once again receiving attention. In this paper we examine contemporary Pagan understandings of and engagements with “sacred sites” in England. Specifically, we explore how Pagan meanings are inscribed and constituted, how they draw on “traditional” understandings of sites and landscapes, and instances in which they challenge or reify the “preservation ethic” of heritage management. From active interactions with sites, such as votive offerings and instances of fire and graffiti damage, to unconventional (contrasted with academic) interpretations of sites involving wights and spirit beings, Neolithic shamans, or goddesses, there are diverse areas of contest. We argue archaeology must not reject Pagan and other folklores as “fringe,” but, in an era of community archaeology, transparency and collaboration, respond to them, preferably dialogically.     

Latent trajectory models for space‐time analysis: An application in deciphering spatial panel data

This article introduces latent trajectory models (LTMs), an approach often employed in social sciences to handle longitudinal data, to the arena of GIScience, particularly space‐time analysis. Using the space‐time data collected at county level for the whole United States through webpage search on the keyword “climate change,” we show that LTMs, when combined with eigenvector filtering of spatial dependence in data, are very useful in unveiling temporal trends hidden in such data: the webpage‐data derived popularity measure for climate change has been increasing from December 2011 to March 2013, but the increase rate has been slowing down. In addition, LTMs help reveal potential mechanisms behind observed space‐time trajectories through linking the webpage‐data derived popularity measure about climate change to a set of socio‐demographic covariates. Our analysis shows that controlling for population density, greater drought exposure, higher percent of people who are 16 years old or above, and higher household income are positively predictive of the trajectory slopes. Higher percentages of Republicans and number of hot days in summer are negatively related to the trajectory slopes. Implications of these results are examined, concluding with consideration of the potential utility of LTMs in space‐time analysis and more generally in GIScience.     

反思与前瞻:中国近代社会史研究的再出发

中国近代社会史复兴四十多年来,成绩令人瞩目。与此同时,日益突出的新老问题,比如近代社会史的贯通性问题、思想理论缺失问题、宏观研究不足问题、区域的代表性问题、脱离时代中心话题的问题,以及过度恋慕地方文献的问题等,正在成为困囿社会史继续前进的桎梏,应当引起学界重视。当前社会史处在与时代同步伐的关键节点上,从事近代社会史的学人十分有必要秉持“长时段”“总体史”和“整体史”的史观,重新审视这些问题,思考探索近代社会史研究再出发的诸种可能性。     

4. A PRAGMATIC RESPONSE1

In the years since its twin publication in 2001 (Indian edition) and 2003 (U.S. edition), Textures of Time has attracted a great deal more attention outside the United States than in the American academy. This, we suggest, is because its ideas and approach are rather at odds with the dominant trends in the area of “postcolonial studies.” In this response to three critical essays that engage with the book—by Rama Mantena, Sheldon Pollock, and Christopher Chekuri—we begin by setting out our principal hypotheses as well as the evidentiary structure of the book, which draws mostly on vernacular materials from South India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The former includes the claim that South India between roughly 1600 and 1800 (and thus in the centuries before the consolidation of colonial rule) possessed considerable and diverse historiographical traditions, though these histories came couched in a variety of genres, rendering them difficult for the uninitiated to recognize at first; the latter requires us to develop the significance of the concepts of “texture” as well as of “subgeneric markers” that help distinguish texts with a historical intention from those that are nonhistorical but have the same generic location. Our response then goes on to discuss why theoretical or ?āstric texts in India do not themselves explicitly theorize the distinctions we make. Here, we posit a contrast between “embedded” and “explicated” concepts in the “emic” sphere, suggesting that “texture” belongs to the first category. We explicitly distinguish our views from the poststructuralist (and Barthesian) language adopted by Pollock in his critique of Textures, and the more predictable postcolonial vision of Chekuri. We once more emphasize the need to take the vernacular historiography seriously, and to refine our reading practices, rather than overly depending on normative materials in Sanskrit, or on a prefabricated theoretical schema that derives from a stylized (and impoverished) view of the nature of the transformations produced by colonial rule.     

HISTORY/PHILOSOPHY/SCIENCE: SOME LESSONS FOR PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

Rheinberger's brief history brings into sharp profile the importance of history of science for a philosophical understanding of historical practice. Rheinberger presents thought about the nature of science by leading scientists and their interpreters over the course of the twentieth century as emphasizing increasingly the local and developmental character of their learning practices, thus making the conception of knowledge dependent upon historical experience, “historicizing epistemology.” Linking his account of thought about science to his own work on “experimental systems,” I draw extensive parallels with other work in the local history of science (the ideas of Latour, Pickering, Rouse, and others) and consider the epistemological implications both for the relation between history and philosophy of science and between history and theory more broadly. In doing so, I suggest that the long‐standing gap between the natural sciences and history as a “human science” has been significantly bridged by the insistence upon the local, mediated, indeed “historicized epistemology” of actual science.     

What Is and Isn't in a Name

Although I remain sympathetic to the narrative behind the notion of “History of Knowledge,” I argue against redrawing the disciplinary boundaries around “knowledge,” as opposed to retaining the term “science.” This is not because I think there is no place for a “history of knowledge,” and not because I am concerned that such a redrawing of disciplinary boundaries would open the floodgates of “anything goes.” Rather, I am doubtful that problems of demarcation and exclusion can be resolved solely by changing a name. I draw on my personal experience as an East Asianist to suggest that the challenges I faced trying to fit into the community of historians of science and technology would not have been solved by renaming the discipline. At the same time, I also argue that changes can and do happen without a change of name. And finally, I maintain that the word “science” has important connotations that we do not want to give up.     

Inside “the system”: engineers,scientists, and the boundaries of social protest in the long 1960s

By the end of the 1960s, many engineers and scientists in the US questioned the social and political dimensions of science and technology. This introspection came as critics assailed science and technology as elements of the militaristic, alienating structure of modern society. Engineers and scientists repudiated, appropriated, or sometimes even acted in concert with these critics. Also relevant, however, in engineers' and scientists' evaluations of their role in society were the emergence of “engineering science,” pre‐existing political ideologies, and simply making a living in a volatile economy. This paper presents dissention from three vantages within the technical community: design engineer Steve Slaby at Princeton University, the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the activist organization Science for the People, located in chapters across the country. These cases differ in the actors' level of political consciousness, their involvement in military research, and the tactics they employed. All, however, suggest cause for reassessment both of the borders between “critics” and “scientists” and of the culture of “total control” ascribed to the era.     

THE PRICE OF METAPHOR

In his critical response to our skeptical inquiry, “Does Culture Evolve?” (History and Theory, Theme Issue 38 [December 1999], 52–78), W. G. Runciman affirms that “Culture Does Evolve.” However, we find nothing in his essay that convinces us to alter our initial position. And we must confess that in composing an answer to Runciman, our first temptation was simply to urge those interested to read our original article–both as a basis for evaluating Runciman's attempted refutation of it and as a framework for reading this essay, which addresses in greater detail issues we have already raised. Runciman views the “selectionist paradigm” as a “scientific”“puzzle‐solving device” now validated by an “expanding literature” that has successfully modeled social and cultural change as “evolutionary.” All paradigms, however, including scientific ones, give rise to self‐validating “normal science.” The real issue, accordingly, is not whether explanations can be successfully manufactured on the basis of paradigmatic assumptions, but whether the paradigmatic assumptions are appropriate to the object of analysis. The selectionist paradigm requires the reduction of society and culture to inheritance systems that consist of randomly varying, individual units, some of which are selected, and some not; and with society and culture thus reduced to inheritance systems, history can be reduced to “evolution.” But these reductions, which are required by the selectionist paradigm, exclude much that is essential to a satisfactory historical explanation–particularly the systemic properties of society and culture and the combination of systemic logic and contingency. Now as before, therefore, we conclude that while historical phenomena can always be modeled selectionistically, selectionist explanations do no work, nor do they contribute anything new except a misleading vocabulary that anesthetizes history.     

Building a Politics of Connectivity: Intercultural In-Commonness in Fairtrade

Fairtrade operates its global system through a homogenising but marketable set of standards. Combined with issues around how to include producers in governance, this has led to feelings of disconnection and disenfranchisement for the latter, which are impacting on Fairtrade’s effectiveness and legitimacy. Through a focus on the South African wine industry, this paper argues that the Fairtrade community needs to be reinvigorated through dialogical communication, impactful participation and cultural synthesis to better enact responsibility across its systemic geographical and cultural distances. “Being-with” its multiple stakeholders makes space for a more responsive, contextual and connected system. Drawing on the ideas of Paulo Freire, the paper concludes that a Fairtrade built on solidarity through a participatory and decentralised system would allow for discussions of the ideals and practices that are essential to negotiating, and not swallowing up, the shifting “we” of Fairtrade and more effectively balancing its local and global responsibilities.     

Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Wissenschaftsphilosophie – Einführende Bemerkungen

History of Science and Philosophy of Science. Introductory Remarks. This article introduces two special issues of the journal History of Science Reports (Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte) with contributions on the relationships of history and philosophy of science since the seventeenth century. The introduction begins with a brief reminder of Thomas Kuhn's provocative discussion of the relationship in the 1970s, placing it in the context of the debate of the period over whether the foundation of university departments for History and Philosophy of Science in the United States had led to a mere “marriage of convenience” or something more. Following this the paper briefly outlines the transformative impact of the “practical turn” in both philosophy and history of science since the 1990s, and contends that the relationship of history and philosophy of science has nonetheless become increasingly distant over time. This is due in large part to the professionalisation of history of science and to the recent turn to cultural approaches in that field; both trends have led to the adoption of strictly historicist rather than analytical perspectives on knowledge. General historians, too, are paying more attention to the increasing impact of science and technology, but have at most instrumental use for philosophical perspectives. Thus, the distinct possibility arises that the debate between historical and analytical approaches in philosophy of science is becoming a conversation within one discipline rather than a dialogue between two disciplines: what was once a ?marriage of convenience”? could end in respectful separation or amicable divorce. The article concludes with brief summaries of the articles published in the two special issues, indicating their relations to specific aspects of the broader topic at hand.