Rethinking PGIS: Participatory or (post)political GIS?

Abstract

Participatory GIS (PGIS) emerged from the contentious GIS debates of the 1990s as a means of political intervention in issues of social and environmental justice. PGIS has since matured into a distinct subfield in which GIS is used to enhance the political engagement of historically marginalized people and to shape political outcomes through mapping. However, this has proven to be difficult work. We suggest that this is because PGIS, particularly in its community development incarnations, though well-intentioned in endeavoring to enhance the voices of the excluded, is inherently limited because it primarily aims to enhance the inclusion and participation of the historically marginalized by working within established frameworks of institutionalized governance in particular places. This, we suggest, has left this mode of PGIS ill-equipped to truly challenge the political-economic structures responsible for (re)producing the very conditions of socio-economic inequality it strives to ameliorate. As a result, we argue that PGIS has become de-politicized, operating within, rather than disrupting, existing spheres of political-economic power. Moving forward, we suggest that PGIS is in need of being retheorized by engaging with the emergent post-politics literature and related areas of critical social and political theory. We argue that by adopting a more radical conception of democracy, justice, and ‘the political’, PGIS praxis can be recentered around disruption rather than participation and, ultimately, brought closer to its self-proclaimed goal of supporting progressive change for the historically marginalized.

Participatory Mapping in a Developing Country Context: Lessons from South Africa

“…Furthermore, the cultural differences in the understanding and consequently the representation of the space, demand a critical perspective on how the mapping process will be conducted [36]. For digital participatory mapping to achieve its potential as a tool for enhancing inclusivity and engagement in places where it is most needed, it is critical to understand the ethical dimensions of participatory mapping processes, particularly as it pertains to social and epistemic justice [50,51].…”

From Importing Innovations to Co-Producing Them: Transdisciplinary Approaches to the Development of Online Land Management Tools

“…However, such an approach can result in the knowledge, values, and needs of certain stakeholders being excluded from the innovation process. This can be particularly problematic for the development and application of digital technologies in rural and remote areas, where factors such as Internet access, technological proficiency, education, age, and cultural background can impact on the capacity of local community members to adopt and utilize technological innovations (Carver et al, 2009;Cinnamon & Schuurman, 2013;Haklay, 2013;Radil & Anderson, 2018). Transdisciplinary approaches offer an alternative to the notion of "importing" innovations by engaging multiple stakeholders and knowledge types in the innovation process, including diverse types of disciplinary and expert knowledge as well as practical and local knowledge (Lang et al, 2012).…”

“…Digital online tools for rural land management are a growing area of interest for academic research and industry development. This trend encompasses both agricultural production and conservation-based management and may be framed as digital agriculture (Trindall et al, 2018), spatial decision support systems (Ramsey, 2009), participatory geographic information systems (Radil & Anderson, 2018), or citizen science (Newman et al, 2017). Advances in geospatial data and While traditional approaches to innovation diffusion often assume that innovations come from outside a local system, transdisciplinary co-production offers an alternative paradigm in which local stakeholders are engaged as co-producers of innovations.…”

Untitled

“…However, such an approach can result in the knowledge, values, and needs of certain stakeholders being excluded from the innovation process. This can be particularly problematic for the development and application of digital technologies in rural and remote areas, where factors such as Internet access, technological proficiency, education, age, and cultural background can impact on the capacity of local community members to adopt and utilize technological innovations (Carver et al, 2009;Cinnamon & Schuurman, 2013;Haklay, 2013;Radil & Anderson, 2018). Transdisciplinary approaches offer an alternative to the notion of "importing" innovations by engaging multiple stakeholders and knowledge types in the innovation process, including diverse types of disciplinary and expert knowledge as well as practical and local knowledge .…”