Situating Neogeography

Abstract

Guest editorialSituating neogeography Enormous amounts of online and networked data are becoming part of the layers, experiences, and landscapes of place. Geographers and other social scientists have only relatively recently begun to understand this rapid expansion of user-centered, locational media. Movements in the academy in response to these phenomena have offered a series of organising labels, with different levels of specifi city and layers of connotation: the geoweb, spatial/social media, user-generated content, 'big data', as well as volunteered geographic information (VGI) and neogeography. Within geography a number of events mark these developments, including a VGI specialist meeting in Santa Barbara, USA in 2007 and an accompanying special issue of GeoJournal (Elwood, 2008), a World University Network seminar on neogeography in 2008, an interview with Michael Goodchild conducted by Nadine Schuurman and published by Environment and Planning D: Society and Space in 2009, Progress in Human Geography reports authored by Jeremy Crampton ( 2009) and Sarah Elwood ( 2010), a specialist meeting on space-time geographies of social networks in Santa Barbara in 2010, a preconference gathering on VGI in Seattle in 2011 reported in an edited collection (Sui et al, 2013), and numerous special sessions at the AAG meetings annually since 2008. Meanwhile, popular technology conferences like Where 2.0 have met for eight years and draw designers and engineers representing software giants and startups, as well as representatives from municipal, state, and federal governments, with only a handful of academic geographers. Since Andrew Turner's Introduction to Neogeography (2006), neogeographers are increasingly defi ning themselves in arenas outside of the academy.These developments are united in their focus on data: proliferation, standardization, interoperability, quality/accuracy, and visualization. Locational data, created both actively/ deliberately/knowingly and passively/unconsciously/unknowingly, increasingly take on social, economic, ethical, and political relevance as geographic information becomes ever-more embedded into everyday practices. The technologies underpinning this rapid expansion are seemingly stateless, are constantly shifting, and sometimes ephemeral. Critical geographers may be consequently less prepared to respond to the various instantiations of locational media, but nonetheless must respond. Here, we consider: what are the outlines of this response? How might we situate neogeography? What are the various assemblages, networks, ecologies, confi gurations, discourses, cyborgs, alliances that enable/enact these technologies?The relevance of such questions, and the need for critical interrogations of the subject, become apparent as neogeographic practices become increasingly popular, ever more visible and infl uential, and frequently a component of the ways in which place is enacted, augmented, imagined, and commoditised. Before outlining the work that follows in this theme issue, we wish to draw the ...

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