Care of the Subject: Feminism and Critiques of GIS

Critique is a fundamental part of academic discourse. It is a means for researchers to critically examine assumptions, ideas, statements and theories. While there may be general agreement about the integral value of critique to scienti!c and intellectual enterprises, less attention has been paid to the form and delivery of critique. This article argues that ‘how’ critique is expressed, as well as what its objectives are, is critical to achieving changes in any research area. We start from the position that many of the critiques of geographic information systems (GIS) have aimed to demonstrate what is ‘wrong’ with this subdiscipline of geography rather than engaging critically with the technology. Critics have judged the processes and outcomes of GIS as problematic without grounding their criticism in the practices of the technology. This follows a pattern of external critique in which the investigator has little at stake in the outcome. External critiques from human geographers tend to be concerned with epistemological assumptions and social repercussions, while internal critiques have focused on the technical. But there is a further difference. Internal critiques have a stake in the future of the technology while external ones tend not to (Pratt, 1996). While dividing critiques of GIS into ‘external’ and ‘internal’ oversimpli!es the !eld, we use it as a heuristic to delineate broad differences in approach. By drawing on feminist analyses of critique, we argue for a form of critique that transcends this binary by tackling enframing assumptions while remaining invested in the subject. To be constructive, critique must care for the subject. A feminist critique of GIS engages more directly with GIS practices, and need not reproduce the antagonistic dualisms that have characterised debates about GIS and technology to date. Over the past decade, there have been a number of critiques of GIS in geographic journals. Many of these were written by critics concerned with the effects of widely disseminated GIS technology, but expressed in a manner consistent with external critique. Critics expressed concerned about the promulgation of positivism, repercussions of enshrining quantitative techniques in software, as well as social effects of GIS (Smith, 1992; Lake, 1993; Sheppard, 1993, 1995; Pickles, 1993, 1995, 1997). Accounts of GIS from the early 1990s were polemical and often negative, while those published later in the decade, when GIS was better ensconced, tended to be more conciliatory (Schuur-