GIS and Geographic Governance: Reconstructing the Choropleth Map

This paper takes up the challenge of "reconstructing gis" by examining gis and governmental rationality. As an aspect of government, mapping is a vital source of geographic knowledge that informs political decision-making. Of particular importance to geographic governance and management are population distributions such as health, wealth, education, density, or criminality. Yet how these distributions have been mapped has shifted and been contested historically. Whereas in the early nineteenth century populations merely filled in pre-existing political areas, by the early twentieth century populations were understood as themselves defining areas and boundaries. Today, gis has returned to the earlier unproblematic politics of space. I explain these shifts by identifying similar shifts between the choropleth and the dasymetric map. Although commonly used, the choropleth is inadequate and misleading. I discuss the possible reasons for these shifts by re-emphasizing mapping as an aspect of geographic governance.

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