[Reader-list] tracing spatial technology

[muthatha at u.washington.edu]

A quick recap – my project is an attempt to extend critical understandings of the use of spatial technologies (remote sensing and GIS) that typically focus on institutional and instrumental aspects, by observing the actual processes of technological practice.

My research approach, following some recent work in Science and Technology Studies (authors like Latour and Bowker) is based on the claim that we not make invisible the spaces and actors involved in the technical stages of knowledge production, and instead maintain the linkages from the phenomenon to be represented (e.g. the agrarian landscape) to the objects of representation (e.g. a land use map) and it’s use. Choices are made at every stage of knowledge production and if these choices and the reasons for them are understood we could make for a more responsible and enabling technology and use of technology.

During my interactions with the technical staff of the NGO that I have been associated with for my research I have noticed a specific culture of learning / practice which I will attempt to illustrate through two examples.

1.	 I had accompanied a soil scientist on a soil mapping field trip. In the process of familiarising me with his approach to soil classification and mapping he handed me a soils manual and asked me to read it on the day before our field visit. The manual contained information about soil characteristics such as texture, depth, and colour - specifically definitions of different classes of texture, depth, etc. Later that day he gave me a quick overview of his field methods. I found that his field methods were based on the interaction between various soil characteristics and that this information was not contained in the manual. So, as we were driving out to the field site the next morning to begin mapping I asked him about this. He said that he had written the manual and had made a deliberate choice not to include the information about the interactions, and he also refused to tell me about it 
in the jeep. He said that it was a question of style, and a style he had developed over the years. Hence it was his opinion that if he ‘told’ me about it, broke it down into steps, it would not help me in the least. I would not develop my own style and would instead practise a rather dumb method of soil mapping. I spent nearly two days traversing the fields with him as he classified soils and mapped their distributions and that was when he shared many insights – as we ‘walked’ the fields. However none of these insights were of the nature ‘do this, and then this, and then that, and ta-da you have your soils class and map’. Instead it involved providing me with some building blocks – some rather slippery building blocks.

This to me was an illustration of a specific epistemology and a specific approach to learning that goes with it. There is no absolute soil class or soil map for a region. Much is based on interpretation and making tough but informed, sophisticated choices on the ground. Thus in order to impart this kind of knowledge he prescribed to a specific method of sharing knowledge and coding knowledge – of only providing some basic building bricks in writing, and then showing one the way through ‘practice’. I learned that I had to learn as I traversed the field, learn to make those tough choices as I stood on a plot of land and looked around me, situate myself with respect the local topography of the regions, interpret the local geology, triangulate it with standing crops in the area (if any), the slope of the land, the colour of the soil, …an interaction between the world and what you know, 
and you keep refining this…the map is never complete stage by stage, inch by inch – a choice you make down the line might still influence a choice you just made. This method seemed to privilege interpretation and interaction more than the ability to make one right decision and assign the correct label and this had to do with the nature of the variable being represented – soil.

2.	During my interactions with technical staff in the GIS labs I came across a specific value attached to memory. Some of the technical staff would joke about my habit of taking notes. They have sometimes alluded to it as being ‘western’ and ‘American’. They on the other hand would come out of a meeting with their boss with the task of executing 7 to 8 land use models and without any notes. Yet they would execute all those models and churn out maps based on those models. They deal with data on at least 4 different computers and distribute work amongst 4 to 5 team members and there is much parallel processing going on to meet deadlines. However notes play a very small role in this lab. There is a feeling of challenge, enjoyment and pride in using one’s memory in all these processes and some of them have alluded to the fact that this helps them cultivate their memory, and hence the choice not to take notes is sometimes deliberate.

These observations prompt me to think of the implications for data/knowledge sharing.  I am not yet familiar with debates and practical processes in the area of data and knowledge sharing, open source etc.,  However a preliminary thought is that processes of making data or knowledge available is linked to the epistemology and cultures of practice/learning/memory…
In following different stages in the production of knowledge reasons for choices about representation, documentation and sharing such as cultivating an interpretive process of knowledge productive, or one that relies and values memory are revealed. Studies that focus solely on institutional aspects and the politics of representation generally tend to point to power and control as factors that influence choices in the production of knowledge. I am not arguing that power is not an important variable in my case, but instead that paying attention to the details of actual practice of knowledge construction yields other insights that are valuable for a more enabling process of knowledge sharing.

- Muthatha