Subaltern Empowerment in the Geoweb: Tensions between Publicity and Privacy

Abstract

Geographers have argued that the emergence of the geospatial web, or geoweb, represents a radical shift away from the state's monopolization of geospatial technologies. Like the public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) movement before it, the geoweb research agenda has emphasized a desire for empowerment and participatory democracy. However, this research agenda has also inherited a conceptualization of power that emphasizes the linkages between empowerment and public visibility, and this paper argues that this inheritance opens potentially sensitive geoweb data to exploitation. Geographers therefore have an important role to play in emphasizing the need to explore ways of harnessing the power of the geoweb for marginalized communities while nonetheless maintaining those communities' privacy. This paper uses work with the Maijuna indigenous people of Peru as a case study to begin a discussion about how the political goals of disempowered people may be best obtained through both public and private uses of the geoweb.

Indigenous identity and environmental governance in Guyana, South America

“…If community elites and institutional members represent the Indigenous population and Indigeneity in a reified form through an image of a static and unchanging Indigenous 'being', attracting development funds may come at the expense of dealing with genuine Indigenous concerns and realities. For example, sharing knowledge across communities and between generations not only helped to surface possible contestations of representations (particularly between the older and younger members of communities), but also generated a shared cultural knowledge to conserve traditional identity which could be used to counter colonial tactics of denigrating or commodifying Indigenous cultures and diversity 55 .…”

Engaging the Non‐Flat World: Anarchism and the Promise of a Post‐Capitalist Collaborative Commons

“…In geography, this community finds its expression in “volunteered geographic information” and the establishment of projects like Openstreetmap (Elwood et al. ; Young and Gilmore ), but similar communities exist across a large spectrum of interests and activities. These communities, it is argued, are fundamentally changing the socio‐economic landscape as the role of producer and consumer begins to merge.…”

“…A key driving force of the P2P collaborative economy are the disparate, self-organised, and trans-national cyber-communities that have united to create and share value (Dodge and Kitchin 2001; Kostakis and Bauwens 2014;Rifkin 2014). In geography, this community finds its expression in "volunteered geographic information" and the establishment of projects like Openstreetmap (Elwood et al 2012;Young and Gilmore 2013), but similar communities exist across a large spectrum of interests and activities. These communities, it is argued, are fundamentally changing the socio-economic landscape as the role of producer and consumer begins to merge.…”

Countering elephant raiding with Short Message Service: Challenges of deploying public participation‐based systems in a setting with sparse Information Communication Technologies resources

“…Hosting the database on internal servers that are inaccessible through the internet puts to rest the concerns about data privacy pertaining to crisis mapping and geoweb in general (Elwood and Leszczynski 2011;Young and Gilmore 2014). As a result, the system tries to make the most of the available ICT infrastructure in maximizing the avenues through which reports can be gathered.…”

“…Though the data about elephant raiding may seem harmless, it can potentially be exploited by poachers for spatiotemporal patterns that would reveal the whereabouts of the elephants. Hosting the database on internal servers that are inaccessible through the internet puts to rest the concerns about data privacy pertaining to crisis mapping and geoweb in general (Elwood and Leszczynski 2011;Young and Gilmore 2014). To completely protect the data however, careful consideration needs to be given to who has physical access to the UWA computers.…”