Global Ambitions, Local Contexts: Alternative Ways of Knowing the World

Abstract

In this Special Issue, we bring together contributions from authors in the scientific discipline Geo-Information Science who engaged with the question: How does Geo-Information Science contribute to the development of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators? The editorial to the Special Issue situates the individual contributions in a broader social science debate, which critically examines the quantification of global policy goals and its effects on how we know and govern the world. We put forward concepts of ‘measuring the world’ and a brief history of the Geo-Information Science discipline, including its dominant positivist paradigm as well as scholarly debates that reflected on and shifted that paradigm. Given the global policy focus of the SDGs, we also briefly discuss policy science paradigms. We analyze the individual articles with regard to their contribution to the SDG indicator development trajectory. We also show how alternative ways of knowing and governing the world complement the dominant positivist paradigm.

Review article: Towards a context-driven research: a state-of-the-art review of resilience research on climate change

“…Yet, as a metaphor resilience provides a sound basis for reconciling types of science, mainly because of its heterogeneity and high level of abstraction (Thorén, 2014). Intellectually, the reconciling of naturalism and constructivism implies an appreciation of diverse scientific vocabularies, many visions of what counts as scientific knowledge, other sciences' scientific worlds, a certain embracing (which includes making manifest) of the tensions between the contrasting types of science, and creating spaces for constructive contestation (Pfeffer & Georgiadou, 2019). Thereby, new resilience perspectives may develop.…”

“…However, AI, due to the unstructured nature of input data, may omit those phenomena, places and social groups that are not present in the data (Hoefsloot et al 2019). Alternative ways of knowing can refine or contribute complementary insights to the precise measurements and data gaps (Pfeffer and Georgiadou 2019). New research questions for naturalist and constructivist research emerge from challenges of organizing big data and how to make it available and usable, given the variety of public and private stakeholders, workflows and incentive structures involved in the (social) construction of big data (Wright, 2016).…”

Improvement of Disability Rights via Geographic Information Science

“…With the rapid development of geospatial technologies, analyzing the geographical facts and understanding societal needs have become even more achievable. The term 'Geographical Information Science' (GIScience), as discussed by several geographers [3][4][5], has expanded the early definitions of geographical information systems (GIS) ("Measuring and representing geographical phenomena . .…”

“…. while interacting with social structures" [6] (p. 75)) by examining their impacts on individuals and society [5,7]. As highlighted by the Association of American Geographers [8], GIS and GIScience can contribute to public policy for several crucial issues, such as "climate change, immigration, health, civil rights and racism, transportation, energy, electoral redistricting, natural resources, social justice, the environment, and many others".…”

“…Although some of the SDGs explicitly encompass geographical information, such as Climate Action (SDG 13), Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11), Life on Land (SDG 15), Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6), and so forth, many other SDGs and their indicators require reliable geographical data and spatial analysis methods as information synthesizers. The potential of GIScience and geospatial technologies for monitoring different SDG indicators has been studied by several researchers [5,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], and challenges such as the selection of appropriate cartographic representations for improved interpretation of the indicators [18] or suitability of the indicators [19] have been discussed. According to Envision2030 of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs [20], the SDGs explicitly include disability rights eleven times and are aimed at improving the lives of persons with disabilities.…”