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Mapping Power: Ironic Effects of Spatial Information
Technology
Jefferson Fox, Krisnawati Suryanata, Peter Hershock,
Albertus Pramono
Introduction
Map (and SIT) can assist communities to assert specific and permanent territorial claims to resources.
Maps can empower communities through sharing history of place, enhancing group awareness and identity, and building trust and communication between people.
Unintended consequences of mapping
Conflicts between and within communities
Loss of indigenous conceptions of space
Increased regulation and cooptation by the state
Tools, Technologies, and Ironic Effects
Tools—a hand-held GPS is a tool
Technologies—Complex system of material and conceptual practices
No exit rights from technologies
Widespread adoption of a technology leads to unintended consequences, ironic or revenge effects
Ironic effects are not incidental consequences but systematically conducive to the further deployment of the technology
Three Hypotheses
Enrollment: Local actors strategically choose to adopt or reject mapping technology
Unexpected Consequences: SIT has embedded within it values such as “objectivity”, “standardization”, and “precision.” The introduction of these values into societies where they have not been prominent will have unexpected effects.
SITs and NGOS: The adoption of spatial information technologies by non-government organizations (NGOs) causes problems because of their social context, the potential for cooptation, and a lack of resources.
Enrollment and Empowerment
Why do communities map?
Who was empowered by SIT?
Who was disadvantaged?
Who controls the maps?
What are the processes in which
empowerment happens?
Advantages
Empowerment does happen—both in terms of advocacy (making territorial claims against the state), and in communities in terms of being better able to plan the management of resources, monitor the implementation of projects, and resolve conflicts.
Enrollment: Who owns the map?
Case Study from Sumba, eastern Indonesia
Unexpected Consequences: Multiple interests and actors
Mapping can force communities to
confront latent issues which can lead to
conflicts.
Who represents the community?
Boundaries
Land Use
One of the ironic effects of SIT is that mapping efforts initiated to resolve conflicts between local communities and government agencies, often results in increased conflict between and within communities.
Unexpected Consequences: Impacts on community values
Are there any changes in the community’s
conceptions of space?
Are there any changes in the community’s
relationship to its land and landscape?
Are there any changes in inter-community
relationships?
Changes in communities perception of space
Case study from Ratanakiri, eastern Cambodia
Unexpected Consequences: Changes in the community’s relationship to its land and
landscape
Mapping seeks to increase security of land ownership, but once we map, people can only obtain security through land titling, a process that is controlled by outside authorities.
One of the practices often used to protect common property resources is control of knowledge about the location of valuable resources.
By making knowledge accessible to all, mapping breaks down common property systems.
SIT and NGOs
How does an NGO decide to invest in developing an SIT component to their work?
How do they sustain operating costs beyond initial investments?
Does the adoption of SIT affect relations with donors?
Does it affect the expectations of community members vis-à-vis the NGO partner.
How does SIT affect NGOs
Case studies from Indonesia
Problem: Effects of SIT on NGOs
Reasons for adopting SIT vary among
NGOs but reasons external to the NGOs
were at least as important as those from
within.
Shortage of technical capacity
Gap in expectations and work cultures
between staff trained in SIT and those
trained in community development
Over-riding need for strong protocol to
follow when introducing SIT into a
community
NGOs pay too little attention on building
local capacity to revise and re-map as
circumstances change.
Summary: Ironic effects
Mapping seeks to mediate conflict between communities and government agencies over land claims. Yet mapping often lead to further conflicts among communities and within communities
Mapping seeks to increase security of land ownership, but once we map, people could only obtain security through land titling, a process that is controlled by outside authorities.
We map to protect common property resources but mapping seems to drive privatization of resources and by making knowledge accessible to all, mapping breaks down common property systems.
Summary: But Yet
SIT does provide a means for re-inserting local people into “empty” state maps and strengthening their claims to land and other resources.
Mapping and working with maps enhances community capacity to negotiate access to local resources, develops technical and analytical skills for understanding both the immediate local and its complex relationships to surrounding locales and regions.
Conclusion
We have no choice but to map, but we need to map with a clear understanding of both intended and unintended consequences of our actions.