Is GIS a Science? Reflecting on Discourse
During my time at Middlebury, the singular nature of GIS and its place in a quantitative, positivist understanding of geography have both drawn and repelled me. As a new geography student, I loved how concrete my GIS work felt: I was able to make a map or analyze a dataset and come up with a ‘solution’ to the problem I’d been presented with. After being frustrated by my inability to ‘make a difference’ in the environmental studies department, creating tangible end products was empowering. I was encouraged by my peers, advisors, and family that hard skills like GIS would help me get a job after graduation. I took that approach more to heart than I realized at the time.
Out of the ten courses required to complete the geography major, four of mine have been completely focused on GIS and two more on other marketable skills (stata and adobe suite). At one point, I declared a joint major with computer science, under the impression that a more expansive technical background would give me the GIS and coding skills I needed to stand out in the job market. Now that I’m a senior and am having to think seriously about the types of jobs I might find fulfilling, I find myself floundering in a sea of hard skills that I feel unqualified to and frankly, uninterested in applying. I have no desire to work in ‘GIS.’ Instead, I would like to use a variety of qualitative and quantitative spatial analysis techniques to address pressing questions in modern society, including but not limited to health, wellbeing, climate change, and environmental degradation. I have been struggling to put my finger on what exactly was bothering me about my training in GIS until reading ‘The Discourse and Discipline of GIS’ (Martin & Wing, 2007). The authors argue that developments in GIS have been shaped by market forces rather than geographic inquiry. I had never thought about what was driving innovations in GIS, had never questioned that perhaps we ought to be refining the theoretical underpinnings of the technology as much as the user accessibility of it. I was also struck by their suggestion that GIS denies and relegates its subjectivity to other, “archaic” forms of geography. In doing so, the technology shuts out the theoretical foundation required to harness its full potential. This was exemplified by Openshaw’s description of the breadth of subjects GIS could cover in a week:
GIS can analyze river networks on Mars on Monday, study cancer in Bristol on Tuesday, map the underclass of London on Wednesday, analyze groundwater flow in the Amazon basin on Thursday, and end the week by modeling retail shopper in Los Angeles on Friday. (Martin & Wing, 2007)
In these remarks, GIS is treated as an individual entity, almost a sentient one. However, ‘GIS’ can do nothing unless researchers use it. And I can’t imagine any researcher who could manage five such disparate data inquiries in a given week. In this regard, GIS is not as limitless as it may be made out to be. Yes, it can be applied to a wide range of subjects and harnessed for many different purposes, but someone ‘trained in GIS’ would be incapable of applying GIS in this manner without significant subject specific knowledge and a strong grasp of geographic theory. Having read this article, I feel validated in my own apprehensions about building a career around GIS, and re-energized by the prospect of grounding myself in the broad realm of geographic theory.
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