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Dartmouth College
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Course description
This course develops the elements of critical analysis using geographic information science (GIS). While using GIS as a method to ask questions and analyze geospatial data, students will also explore the ways that GIS is shaped by its underlying assumptions, embedded politics, societal impacts, knowledge-generation capabilities, and other limitations. Lab sessions will incorporate learning GIS analysis in the open source statistical package “R”, in tandem with readings and discussions about the theoretical and social dimensions of GIS.
[Source: ORC/Catalog, 04/04/2022] Dist: TAS
Defining analysis
The process of making sense of an issue, place, situation, or other phenomena by identifying its key components. All people are routinely analytical but researchers and teachers try to take especial care in justifying their analytical decisions. When confronted with something concrete that needs to be understood—such as a global commodity chain—geographers seek to achieve synthesis by first analysing what may be a multifaceted phenomenon. Analysis is the search for what some call ‘rational abstractions’: these aim to ‘cut reality at the joints’ rather than impose categories that make distinctions between what are, in fact, indissociable or functionally coherent phenomena. See also abstraction.
Rogers, A., Castree, N., & Kitchin, R. (2013). Analysis. In A Dictionary of Human Geography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2 Jun. 2023
In the Library's collections
You can use one of these subject headings to start your research in the library's online catalog:
- "critical GIS"This is a keyword search of all the resources in the library's collections.
- "critical analysis" AND GISThis is a keyword search of all the library's resources.
Introductory reading(s)
Geocomputation with R by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781138304512Geocomputation with R is for people who want to analyze, visualize and model geographic data with open source software. It is based on R, a statistical programming language that has powerful data processing, visualization, and geospatial capabilities. The book equips you with the knowledge and skills to tackle a wide range of issues manifested in geographic data, including those with scientific, societal, and environmental implications. ...
Encyclopedia of GIS by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780387308586The Encyclopedia of GIS provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide, contributed by experts and peer-reviewed for accuracy, and alphabetically arranged for convenient access. The entries explain key software and processes used by geographers and computational scientists. ...
GIS: an introduction to mapping technologies by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780429441028Over the past few decades the world has been organized through the growth and integration of geographic information systems (GIS) across public and private sector industries, agencies, and organizations. This has happened in a technological context that includes the widespread deployment of multiple digital mobile technologies, digital wireless communication networks, positioning, navigation and mapping services, and cloud-based computing, spawning new ways of imagining, creating, and consuming geospatial information and analytics. GIS: An Introduction to Mapping Technologies is written with the detached voices of practitioner scholars who draw on a diverse set of experiences and education, with a shared view of GIS that is grounded in the analysis of scale-diverse contexts emphasizing cities and their social and environmental geographies. ...
The SAGE handbook of GIS and society by Call Number: Baker-Berry G 70.212 .S24 2011ISBN: 9781412946452Over the past twenty years research on the evolving relationship between GIS and Society has been expanding into a wide variety of topical areas, becoming in the process an increasingly challenging and multifaced endeavor. The SAGE Handbook of GIS and Society is a retrospective and prospective overview of GIS and Society research that provides an expansive and critical assessment of work in that field. ...
Selected book title(s)
Critical race spatial analysis: mapping to understand and address educational inequity by Call Number: Baker-Berry LC 213.2 .C754 2017ISBN: 9781620364246How does space illuminate educational inequity? Where and how can spatial analysis be used to disrupt educational inequity? Which tools are most appropriate for the spatial analysis of educational equity? This book addresses these questions and explores the use of critical spatial analysis to uncover the dimensions of entrenched and systemic racial inequities in educational settings and identify ways to redress them. ...
Deep maps and spatial narratives by Call Number: Baker-Berry GA 139.5 .D44 2015ISBN: 9780253015600Deep maps are finely detailed, multimedia depictions of a place and the people, buildings, objects, flora, and fauna that exist within it and which are inseparable from the activities of everyday life. These depictions may encompass the beliefs, desires, hopes, and fears of residents and help show what ties one place to another. A deep map is a way to engage evidence within its spatio-temporal context and to provide a platform for a spatially-embedded argument. The essays in this book investigate deep mapping and the spatial narratives that stem from it. ...
Google Earth, outreach and activism by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781441139795In order to be able to communicate and engage with each other via new communicative spaces such as Google Earth, we need to understand as much as possible about how they work as cultural texts- how and why we make them and how we respond to them. Launched in 2005, Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program, mapping the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery and aerial photography. By addressing the sociopolitical issues at stake in society's use of social websites, the author provides the first ever close reading of Google Earth as a powerful player in the communication realm of social media. ...
International encyclopedia of human geography by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780081022962Publication Date: 2nd ed.The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Second Edition, embraces diversity by design and captures the ways in which humans share places and view differences based on gender, race, nationality, location and other factors--in other words, the things that make people and places different. Questions of, for example, politics, economics, race relations and migration are introduced and discussed through a geographical lens. ...
Mapping: a critical introduction to cartography and GIS by Call Number: Baker-Berry GA 102.4 .E4 C73 2010ISBN: 9781405121736Mapping: A Critical Introduction to Cartography and GIS is an introduction to the critical issues surrounding mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) across a wide range of disciplines for the non-specialist reader. Examines the key influences Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and cartography have on the study of geography and other related disciplines. ...
New lines: critical GIS and the trouble of the map by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780816698530New Lines takes the pulse of a society increasingly drawn to the power of the digital map, examining the conceptual and technical developments of the field of geographic information science as this work is refracted through a pervasive digital culture. Matthew W. Wilson draws together archival research on the birth of the digital map with a reconsideration of the critical turn in mapping and cartographic thought. ...
Other library resource(s)
Geographic information science from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199874002Geographic information systems (GIS) are the collection of software, hardware, outputs, personnel, and practices that together facilitate the analysis and mapping of geographic entities and phenomena. The field of geographic information science (GIScience) broadly explores the theory and concepts underpinning GIS and related geospatial technologies such as remote sensing and the Global Positioning System (GPS). The technological history of GIS began in the 1960s with the first rudimentary systems developed primarily for storing land information and for basic visualized outputs of geographic entities. ...- GIS applications in human geography from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199874002Human geography is the branch of geography concerned with how and why people organize themselves across space and interact with their environments. Human geographers conduct their research that underpins the subfields of human geography in many social arenas. These subfields range from the geography of religion and regional geographies to political geography and mountain geography, and more. ...
- GIScience of human dynamics from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199874002Human dynamics, which encompasses all forms of human activities and interactions, plays critical roles in the economic, social, cultural, and political systems of human societies around the world. Understanding human dynamics therefore is an important research topic that has been pursued in many disciplines. Human dynamics evolves with the changing environments, cultures, and technologies over time. With the rapid technological advances since the late 20th century, we have observed increasing human activities and interactions taking place in a hybrid physical-virtual world, such as online shopping in virtual space coupled with deliveries of the purchased items in physical space. ...
Finding scholarly articles & journal title(s)
With our discovery system, you can easily search across multiple formats to find resources for your search. The link below focuses on scholarly journal articles.
Progress in human geography: straddling the fenceCall Number: Electronic journalCritical GIS and, more recently, critical studies of the geoweb, stand at the intersection of GIScience and human geography, posing questions about the societal and scholarly practices and implications of geospatial data and technologies. ...
Annals of the American Association of GeographersCall Number: Electronic journalThe Annals of the American Association of Geographers is recognized as the Association's premier journal for major research articles for all fields of geography. A paper accepted for publication must adhere to a high standard of scholarship and make an important contribution to geographic knowledge. It should also be grounded in the relevant literature of the specialization it represents and, where appropriate, establish relationships to themes within the broader discipline.
International journal of geographical information science (IJGIS) by Call Number: Electronic journalA major, theoretical journal for Geographic Information Science. The aim of International Journal of Geographical Information Science is to provide a forum for the exchange of original ideas, approaches, methods and experiences in the field of GIScience.
Web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Internet resource(s)
- Critical GIS from GIS&T Body of Knowledge
Feminist interactions with GIS started in the 1990s in the form of strong critiques against GIS inspired by feminist and post-positivist theories. Those critiques mainly highlighted a supposed epistemological dissonance between GIS and feminist scholarship. ...
Citing and Tracking Your Bibliographic References
Use this guide to help you learn how to correctly cite and keep track of the references you find for your research.
Keeping up with Cartography/GIS journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for Cartography or GIS? And do you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's, you can download and read the articles you want from the journals for which we have subscriptions.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's also available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.