Data, Infrastructures & Geographic Imaginations Tracey P. Lauriault

PhD Defence Presentation

Dept. Geography and Environmental Studies

Wednesday May 23rd, 9:30 AM, Carleton University, Loeb Building room D382.

Central Argument

Canadian reality is conditioned by government generated data and the related infrastructures that produce them.

Data and infrastructures shape and are shaped by geographic imaginations.

Geographic imaginations have real material effects as they produce knowledge, spaces and subjects which are acted

upon.

• Atlas of Canada

• 1906-Present

• “ A portrait of Canada ”

• Census of Canada

• 1871-2011

• “ The stock taking of the people ”

Case Studies

Lens

• Data, maps and infrastructure are socially constructed (Hughes, Hetch & Thad Allen, Marvin & Graham, Star and Ruhleder, Latour)

• The Atlas of Canada and census are biopower in action (Foucault)

• The Atlas of Canada and the census, and their infrastructures are biopolitical objects which produce subjects to be governed - they are gouvernementale (Foucault)

Objective

Premise: Government manages territory and people, Atlas and census help perform that function by ‘making up spaces

and people’ and by doing so constructing geographic imaginations.

Empirically assess if the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada shape geographical imaginations.

• Modify the Ian Hacking framework of dynamically ‘making up people’

• Apply the ‘making up spaces’ modified Hacking framework to the analysis of the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada

• Critically examine the discourse of data, maps and infrastructure – infrastructural inversion (Bowker)

Methodology

Data and maps are technological and scientific products, interrogated according to the norms of the scientific

messages they convey as well as the social contexts of their emergence, dissemination and use (Pickles, Harley, Latour).

• Data and maps are socio-technological objects (Hughes)

• Maps & data are knowledge representations, inscriptions and immutable mobiles (Latour)

• Maps and data are arrangements of “facts within a specific cultural perspective” (Harley)

• Atlas of Canada and Census of Canada are infrastructural work (Curtis)

Data

Technopolitical Regime – grounded in institutions, linked sets of people, engineering and industrial practices, technological

artifacts, political programs and institutional ideologies which act together to govern technological development and pursue

technopolitics (Hetch)

• Story telling system (Kim & Ball-Rokeach)

• Implicated in the “cultural construction of space” (Dourish & Bell)

• Information ecology (Nardy & O’Day)

• Properties of infrastructure – ethnographic view (Star & Ruhleder)

• Inscription devices & black box (Latour)

• Large technopolitical regimes (Hetch) with momentum (Hughes, Feenberg) exhibiting infrastructural determinism (Lauriault & Lenczner)

• Invisible, human built technological fabric of society (Hayes)

Data Infrastructures

Is gouvernementale, biopolitical & a socio-technopolitical state formation activity that helps construct geographical

imaginations

Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI)

CGDI

Geographic Imaginations

Joseph Campbell “the society of the Planet” from the Power of the Myth in reference to the Blue Marble Image released by NASA in 1972

Said - Orientalism

Cosgrove - Appollo’s Eye

Anderson - Imagined Communities

Lefebvre - The Production of Space

Debarbieux - Imagination et imaginaire géographiques

Wright - Terrae Incognitae

Tang - The Geographic Imagination of Modernity

Schulten - The Geographical Imagination in America 1880-1950

Winichakul - Geo-body

Geographic Imaginations Data as representations/inscriptions of space & infrastructure as spatial practice construct imaginations of space & condition practices in space.

“worlds where real elements are arranged and introduced in an interpretable system whereby individuals or collectivities on one side and the earth on the other are harmoniously arranged in a coherent fashion”

(Debarbieux)

Geography formed an epistemic apparatus of collecting and processing spatial data in the service of the state, theoretical discourse provided the

nation with an imaginary identity by interpreting national culture and history as the result of people’s engagement with the singular conditions,

structures, and processes of their terrestrial habitats (Tang)

How scientific classification brings into being new kinds of people who conceive and perceive themselves as that kind

1. The category or classification and the category and classification as an object

2. How it came into being

3. How it becomes a convention

4. What is actually being measured

5. And how the thing measured gets put to work

Hacking – Framework of ‘making up people’

Hacking ‘Making up People’ Framework

5 Interactive Elements of the Looping Effect

7 Engines of Discovery 3 Derived Engines

Classification & Material Effects

Detail of Halifax map extracted from Plate 39, 1st Edition of the

Atlas of Canada (1906) showing the location of the Insane and the Poor

Asylums

Infirmities Category of Unsound Mind, Schedule 1

Nominal Return of the Living of the 1871 Census, Nova

Scotia (CCRI, 2012)

Resisting a spatial arrangement

Modified Framework ‘Making up Spaces’

5 Interactive Elements of the Looping Effect

6 Engines of Discovery 3 Derived Engines

Examples

The World, 2nd Edition Atlas of Canada, Circa 1914

Atlas of Canada - Case Study

1. National Atlas Defined

(Harley, Schulten, Ackerman, Monmonier, Salichtchev, Brouillette, IGU, Nicholson, Symons, Taylor, Groot, Edney, Buckley, Vasquez de Maure)

2. Atlas of Canada

• institutions

• knowledge

• Experts

• scientification

• normalization

• bureaucratization

3. Atlas of Canada Content

Atlas Content Groupings

Examining the particularities of classifying to assess if spaces were made up, specifically these aspects of the Hacking framework:

• counting

• quantifying

• norms

• correlation

• taking action and

• scientification

• 3 derived engines & the 5 elements

4 Map Topics

4. a) Relief

1st Edition 2nd Edition 3rd Edition

4th Edition

5th Edition

6th Edition

Fremlin’s Relief Profiles, 4th edition

4. b) Forest

6th Edition

3rd Edition

4th Edition

1st Edition 2nd Edition

5th Edition

4. c) Communication Infrastructure

1st Edition 2nd Edition 3rd Edition

4th Edition

5th Edition

4. d) Territorial Evolution

6th Edition

1st Edition

2nd Edition

3rd Edition

4th Edition

5th Edition

5th Edition Treaties Map

5th Edition

Census of Canada - Case Study

1. Census History and Definition

2. Census of Canada

3. Census of Canada Question

• Examined 2 classifications across time

• All elements & engines of the Hacking’s framework

4. 2 Topics

4. a) Citizenship & Immigration

4. a) Citizenship & Immigration cntd.

4. b) Official Languages

4. b) Language cndt.

• Atlas of Canada and ‘making up spaces’

• Census of Canada and ‘making up spaces’

• Socio-Technopolitics, Gouvernementalité and Biopower

• Hacking’s Framework and Geography

• Contributions to Geography

• Conclusion

Conclusion