Place_and_Identity

National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

GEOGRAPHIES OF THE INFORMATION SOCIETY:

PLACE AND IDENTITY IN AN AGE OF TECHNOLOGICALLY

REGULATED MOVEMENT

8-10 October 1998

Santa Barbara, California

Research Conference Report

Compiled by Michael Curry and Munroe Eagles

Core Planning Group

John Agnew, Dept. of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles

Philip Agre, Dept. of Information Science, University of California, Los Angeles

Colin Bennett, Dept. of Political Science, University of Victoria

Helen Couclelis, Dept. of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara

Audrey Kobayashi, Dept. of Geography, Queen’s University

Carolyn Marvin, Annenberg School of Communication, University of PennsylvaniaMark Poster, Dept. of History, University of California, Irvine

February 1999

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction.................................................................................................................1

Call for papers.............................................................................................................3

Conference organization..............................................................................................4

Introduction……………………………………………………………………...4

Break-out………………………………………………………………………..4

Plenary…………………………………………………………………………..5Breakout…………………………………………………………………………5

Plenary………………………………………………………………………......5Wrapup………………………………………………………………………….5

Summary.....................................................................................................................5

Aftermath....................................................................................................................6

Appendix I: Co-Directors and Core planning group....................................................7

Appendix II: Call for papers.........................................................................................10

Appendix III: Conference attendees.............................................................................13

Appendix IV: Guidelines for Proposals for Seed Grants under the Varenius Project.....15

Appendix V: Seed grants awarded...............................................................................17

Appendix VI: Paper Abstracts......................................................................................18

GEOGRAPHIES OF THE INFORMATION SOCIETY:

PLACE AND IDENTITY IN AN AGE OF TECHNOLOGICALLY REGULATED

MOVEMENT

INTRODUCTION

The 1995 NCGIA application to NSF noted that

Geographic information has been produced for decades by a combination

of the military, other government agencies, and the private sector.... [But

now] New, more efficient techniques are emerging for collecting and

processing spatial data and for communicating geographic knowledge

from the field to the consumer, all driven by the changing economics of

information creation, dissemination, and use.

As a result, it was concluded, there was a need to study the "impacts of geographic informationtechnologies on individuals, groups, and society as a whole."

The February 1997 meeting on Project Varenius cast this concern more broadly:

New information technologies are helping "re-write" both the geographi-

cal configuration of material artifacts (the built environment; the spatial

organization of economic activities) but also the ways in which people in-

teract with one another and how identities are constructed. A fair bit of

work is underway on the former within geography, but there is relatively

little systematic understanding of how the Web, telecommuting, etc. is af-

fecting the relationship between identity and place. Traditional concep-

tions of boundedness (nation state, neighborhood, home) are being under-

mined; ideas of separateness/belonging are being reconstituted; and no-

tions of place/space as a container and as belonging are shifting.

The leaders of the specialist meeting on "Place and Identity in an Age of TechnologicallyRegulated Movement" drew heavily on this conceptualization of several of the central issues inthe geography of the information society in developing a call for papers [See Appendix I].

Central to the conceptualization of this meeting were the following premises:

- That in the term "geography of the information society," "geography" is to understoodin its usual meaning as the study of the ways in which people have humanized the

face of the earth, rather than in a more constricted way as, for example, "spatial sci-ence." And hence, that geographies of the information society need not refer to or

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rest upon appeal to spatial metrics. And that care needs to be exercised in the use of

the term "geographic information," lest important such information be overlooked.

- That while the term "information society" in the first instance refers to a particularsocial formation, where information constitutes what might be termed the "crownAnd any study of contemporary information societies needs to consider the relation-

ship between those societies and past societies.

- Finally, that we ought to operate in terms of what is now the consensus among stu-dents of the relationships among science, technology, and society, that to conceptual-ize the matter as one of the "impacts" of technology is fundamentally to misconstrue

the nature of technologies, science, and societies.

As described in the call for papers, the specialist meeting saw the central questions in thefollowing way:

The nation-state is rather new, but identity and boundaries have always been related, justbecause identity-formation involves the differentiation of oneself or one’s group from others.Indeed, the nation-state has been but one particularly powerful of these geographically boundedcommunities, and identities are often the result of a complex nesting of place-based identities,overlain with non-place-based ones. Still, the nation-state has promoted a powerful image ofidentity, as something that can be described in terms of borders in a landscape and lines on amap. And even though there have always been forces and pressures--in the form of alternativessuch as religion, race, class, and even the corporation—to challenge the association between

place and identity, geographically-based forms of identity have remained important, even central,in the lives of most people.

But with the advent of modern communication technologies, apparent alternatives to

place-based identity systems have become increasingly visible. Indeed, the Internet or cyber-space has been touted by many as constituting the most far-reaching challenge yet to the strengthand persistence of place-based identity. Unfortunately, in the popular literature it is often over-looked that the Internet and the dramatically increased flow of ideas has emerged within a largercontext, of the unprecedented flow of people and goods. Where these flows have crossed local,regional, and national boundaries, they have been accompanied by the development of institu-tions designed to regulate them, and by the increasing ability to track goods, people—and infor-mation. The interaction of these phenomena—increasing amounts of mobile information, theincreased flows of goods and people, and the rise of new mechanisms for the regulation ofeach—raises interesting questions about the future of geographically based identities.The conference addressed these issues in the context of the following themes:

What have been the traditional means for the regulation of borders? In

what ways have they been successful in promoting territorially-based

identities?

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How has the development of modern communications and especially geo-

graphical technologies altered the regulation of flows of people, goods,

and information?

To what extent has the “regulation of borders” at various scales—from

neighborhood to nation state and beyond—moved away from geographical

borders, and been replaced by ubiquitous forms of control?

How are these various regulatory regimes related to personal and group

identity?

How have alternative, non-place-based identities been promoted and

maintained? How have they been controlled, and how successful have

these controls been? What lessons relevant to the world of the Internet

can be learned from these experiences?

What future is there for borders and boundaries in a world where ‘there is

Based upon this formulation of the important issues, a core planning group was chosen

[See Appendix I for details]:

John Agnew, Dept. of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles

Philip Agre, Dept. of Information Science, University of California, Los

Angeles

Colin Bennett, Dept. of Political Science, University of Victoria

Helen Couclelis, Dept. of Geography, University of California, Santa Bar-

bara

Audrey Kobayashi, Dept. of Geography, Queen’s University

Carolyn Marvin, Annenberg School of Communication, University of

Pennsylvania

Mark Poster, Dept. of History, University of California, Irvine

CALL FOR PAPERS

The call for papers was widely distributed. It was posted to a number disciplinary andsub-disciplinary of list-servs. The leaders sent individual notes to about one-hundred individualsknown to be interested in the issues. And it was posted, thanks to Phil Agre, a member of thecore planning group, on his Red Rock Eater News Service, which has about 10,000 subscribers.

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