Figure 1: Backcover of Qualitative GIS, delineated into 3 sections: a, b & c.

Perhaps it is uncommon to use an image of the backcover of a book in a review, as opposed to the front, however in this case it is fruitful. I have split the backcover of ‘Qualitative GIS’ into 3 sections (figure 1) each of which says something important about what it is the book does, or why it was written. The first section, a, is a comment from Eric Sheppard in which he describes the book as ‘definitive’, fundamentally he is right and I’ll discuss why he is right at the end. Section c deals with who the book is aimed at, and I’ll give my interpretation of this after we deal with section b.

Section b gives an indication of what the reader is to expect in this book, and surely the weight of expectation for such an ambitious publication is high. The broad strokes of the title – qualitative GIS- mean we have to ask, is this the critical GIS manifesto? Is this finally GIS reconsidered and emerging from the shadow of ‘Ground Truth’ (Pickles, 1995)? And, in light of numerous recent papers on critical GIS, qualitative GIS and non-quantitative GIS; is this the defining text-book? Well, no, not exactly. If anything this book constitutes a progress report, because fundamentally we haven’t yet arrived at a ‘qualitative GIS’. As noted in the introduction by Elwood and Cope this book should be seen as a framework, and as a spur for research going forward. Thus section b which subsets the book into: representations; analytical interventions and innovations; and conceptual engagements; is no less a structure than a suggestion- at most a research agenda.

It is with this approach that we can best understand this book, no section is intended to exhibit completeness, rather each contributed paper is an experiment in (re)making, engaging with, or retooling GIS qualitatively. The first section, dealing with representation, is perhaps the most surprising, there is no direct challenge to pre-existing methods of representation in GIS, rather the discussion of representation deals with imbuing existing structures with multiplicities. Such an approach constitutes what Elwood describes as ‘representational flexibility’ and the ability to see data structures and methods differently rather than recode them. This approach is evident in Schuurman’s chapter looking to integrate qualitative data into metadata, as well as Corbett and Rambaldi’s, and Elwood’s chapters which highlight the role of communities and local production of cartographic or geographic knowledge. This is a pleasing perspective from my point of view; I never really bought into the need to develop a new GIS₂ (Curry, 1998) or GIS/2 (Sieber, 2004).

The next section, entitled ‘analytical interventions and innovations’ follows on from the idea of representational flexibility, discussing recent approaches in analysing or experiencing GIS outputs, as well as modifications that allow for richer forms of data to enter a GIS. Knigge and Cope present what for me is the book’s best example of mixed-methods/qualitative GIS in their chapter on grounded visualisation and scale. This is a very effective demonstration of GIS being used as an analytical tool in a way which embraces its quantitative and qualitative strengths. In terms of the back cover content (fig. 1 b) however, the 2 chapters in this section do not really cover a range of methods of analysis, and the chapter from Jin-Kyu Jung is not as strong as other contributions in this book. The final section of the book, ‘conceptual engagements’, features content that is implicitly driving the work of the previous sections. Aitken and Craine present an excellent discussion of representation and non-representation through image and affect which is reminiscent of Mei-Po Kwan’s work (i.e. Kwan, 2007; Kwan, 2002), the most significant figure in critical GIS to be missing from this book.

In summary, Cope and Elwood have been successful in seeding a ‘qualitative GIS’ for future debate. This is not a complete book, but that’s the point and it’s why Eric Sheppard (fig. 1 section a) is spot on when saying ‘Qualititative GIS is coming of age’, suggesting development, or movement towards, rather than attainment of such a status. I hope this will cause GIS researchers to think harder about what they do, and whilst I do not think we’ll find a mass movement to ‘qualititative GIS researchers’, I hope it will result in new techniques emerging in GIS research and a greater consideration of multiple perspectives and representations. Not all the chapters are classic, Nadine Schuurman for instance is almost boring in her discussion of metadata, and many of the chapters are available in some form as journal articles, however this is a great collection, particularly as noted (in fig. 1 c) for ‘upper-level students and researchers’. As GIS becomes increasingly pervasive in the social sciences I think this book will prove an excellent signpost for more qualitatively orientated researchers who wish to integrate mapping and spatial interpretations with their work. I look forward to an expanded and progressive second edition!

References

Curry, M.R., 1998. Digital Places: Living With Geographical Information Technologies, London: Routledge.

Kwan, M., 2002. Feminist Visualization: Re-envisioning GIS as a Method in Feminist Geographic Research. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92, 645-661.

Kwan, M., 2007. Affecting Geospatial Technologies: Toward a Feminist Politics of Emotion*. The Professional Geographer, 59, 22-34.

Pickles, J., 1995. Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems, London: Guilford Press.

Sieber, R., 2004. Rewiring for a GIS/2. Cartographica, 39, 25-39

I’ve been reading through a recent book entitled “Qualitative GIS: A Mixed Methods Approach” by Meghan Cope and Sarah Elwood, hopefully I’ll post a full review it soon. In the meantime however, I want to think about one of the sections in it by Marianna Pavlovskaya, specifically her discussion of whether or not GIS is inherently a quantitative tool. I tend to agree with Marianna on one front – rarely do most GIS users directly engage with the quantitative aspects of GIS, use of GIS becomes about spatial reasoning with overlays and logical tesselations of geometry and the impact of visual depiction. On the other hand though I offer a photo of books currently on my desk:

Figure 1: Some books on my shelf

I think there is a serious point here; GIS is a tool- people are happy to use tools to get the jobs they need doing done, I trust an allen key to undo parts of my bicycle without breaking them, and tighten them to a safe level. I don’t however need to know exactly how the tool is made, I just trust I know how to use it. The same is true of GIS, functions such as overlays are tools (in fact this is the exact terminology that ESRI use in ArcGIS), you use tools to analyse maps in a non quantitative way, because you reason and understand their usage; I don’t specifically need to know how the overlay works in a mechanical sense, just that it does. It is generally that case that such tools, even simple tools have a basis in quantitative fields, often mathematics; an overlay is a topological operator deriving from that branch of mathematics.

Now, in a GIS such tools are formed from solving challenges in ‘computational geometry’, and I agree with Pavlovskaya again in that ‘computerisation is not quantification’, except that in this case; that is exactly what it is. There are numerous instances in GIS, shown through point pattern analyses, topological functions and distance decay in which it is clear that GIS is a quantitative tool with a quantitative development.

So is Pavlovskaya wrong then? Well, no. There are different kinds of users in GIS and for the most part users aren’t looking ‘under the bonnet’, to them a GIS is a set of tools, the use of which causes them to construct (make) GIS as a non-quantitative thing. What seems strange is that in looking for opening for non-quantitative GIS in this perspective, the current way of constructing GIS quantitatively had to be challenged, or seen to be wrong and somehow misguided. In my eyes the interesting thing that comes out of this discussion is the idea of abstraction.

In a sense quantitative, or technical, ways of seeing are increasingly being abstracted: bundled and enclosed into something you can think of as a ‘black box’. This encourages engagement as the most common user experience is a qualitative one, as qualitiative experiences for most are more intuitive – generally we have the appropriate skills to deal with such experiences, but may need to learn the skills to engage quantitatively in a complex system such as GIS. Software such as GIS packages have the effect of making previosuly difficult quantitative functions much more accessible, even a measure of straightline distance is a quantitiative function – the Pythagorean theorum, and this can be done in Google Earth and Google Maps which are probably the most accessed GIS in the world (if not also the most accessible). I think the question we have to ask is: what are the tradeoffs in making quantitative functions more accessible, in having them reconstructed as qualitative tools? The obvious answer to this is that when things are conceived as ‘black boxes’ they are exactly that: we have no idea of what is going on inside them. Thus, qualitatively, we have to decide whether or not that is important; in fact for qualitative GIS is may not be that important, as the world is reseen with ‘fuzzy’ characteristics.

References

Cope, M. and Elwood, S. (2009) Qualitative GIS: A Mixed Methods Approach. Sage, London

(much of Pavlovskaya’s chapter also appears in the following paper)

Pavlovskaya, M. (2006) ‘Theorizing with GIS: A Tool for Critical Geographies?’ Environment and Planning A 38(11) 2003-20

Addendum

Muki Haklay often blogs about usability and critical GIS, amongst numerous other things of interest at his blog here.