Michael R. Curry

The Digital Individual and the Private Realm

Geographic information systems and the technological family associated with them—global positioning systems, geodemographics, and remote surveillance systems—raise important questions with respect to the issue of privacy. Of most immediate import, the systems store and represent data in ways that render ineffective the most popular safeguards against privacy abuse. But the systems are associated with more fundamental changes in the right to privacy and even, some would say, with challenges to the possibility of privacy itself. They make reasonable and acceptable the view that technological change is inevitable and autonomous, and therefore, too, are the development of increasingly comprehensive dossiers on individuals and households and the use of increasingly powerful means for the technological enhancements of vision. And their use in the creation of data profiles supports a wide-ranging reconceptualization of community, place, and individual. Nonetheless, in the ways they create and use digital profile...

Emergency response systems and the creeping legibility of people and places

Over the last 35 years, centralized universal-number (in the United States, 9-1-1) systems have come to be the preferred means of emergency-response dispatching. The creation of these systems has motivated the development of information systems that render the landscape, to those with the right access, increasingly legible. This has been to the benefit of those receiving emergency services, but also to the benefit of police and commercial interests, who have used the improved infrastructure as bases for the creation of geodemographic and other profiling systems. More recently, the creation of wireless telephony has motivated the creation of a further surveillance infrastructure built on and integrated into that landscape. One consequence has been the commercialization of the systems in ways that permit the incorporation of more intimate and detailed data into preexisting systems. Public concern with locational surveillance systems has focused on privacy. However, “privacy” may be an inadequate frame through which to understand these issues and to fashion appropriate responses.

Toward a Geography of a World Without Maps: Lessons from Ptolemy and Postal Codes

Abstract Discussions within geography of the history of the concepts of “space” and “place” are often Whiggish rehearsals of perceived mistakes and misapprehensions; there is little sense that earlier understandings of the concepts have anything important to offer the contemporary geographer. Conversely, one finds little that suggests that reflections on contemporary life might shed light on those now seemingly antiquated concepts. Both views are unfortunate. In fact, viewed from the perspective of current practice, the classical division of topos/choros/geos makes sense not, as is commonly thought, as an ontologically oriented oversimple conceptualization of scalar differences but, rather, as an outgrowth of epistemological differences. The discourses that emerged around those concepts—topography, chorography, and geography—each relied upon a different way of knowing, storing, and communicating knowledge. Indeed, in the absence of the appropriate affording technologies—the map and the data storage device—we had a world without space, which (along with its conceptual relatives, including the “geographic”) emerged as a relatively recent invention. At the same time, against the background of this rereading of the concepts of space and place, much that occurs today turns out to be a matter of place, not space. In fact, the concept of space typically operates either metaphorically or reflectively, and the current practice of using the terms almost interchangeably (as with the practice of using the term “spatiality” to refer to matters concerning both space and place) merely obscures.

Postmodernism in Economic Geography: Metaphor and the Construction of Alterity

From the premise that economic geography is shot through with metaphors, it is argued that there is very little difference in the way modernist and postmodernist economic geographers semantically approach metaphor within their discipline. This argument is illustrated by examining within economic geography the use both of ‘big’ metaphors, such as the gravity model, and of ‘little’ metaphors such as those that pepper individual pieces of writing. Although there are few semantic differences with respect to metaphor use between the two groups, there are pragmatic differences; that is, in the way metaphors are used to create community, and its obverse, otherness or alterity. In their quest to develop foolproof methods that could be applied by everyone, modernist geographers proposed a democratic view. In contrast, for postmodernist economic geographers understanding the world requires an act of transcendence; this view is Homeric or heroic, wherein the world is divided into those who possess the depth of sensitivity to grasp complexity, and those who cannot and are thus merely ‘other’.

Towards a contextualist approach to geographical knowledge

Contemporary geographers assume that before embarking on empirical studies one ought to determine what exists and what can be known. In practice, this view denies validity to much traditional work. A contextual approach, deriving from contemporary ordinary-language philosophy, will be less constraining and more critical, providing a bridge between traditional and contemporary work.

On the possibility of democracy in a geocoded world

Political redistricting has increasingly been carried out with the aid of geographic information systems (GIS). Concerns about the systems have focused on their misuse, but their critics have failed to see that they raise deeper issues. First, they conceptualize districts as containers in space, where in fact people typically see themselves as belonging in and attached to their neighborhoods. Second, GIS-based geodemographic systems, based on inferred data about individuals and groups, appeal to an inadequate means of theorizing about community and culture. Finally, the availability of these data is increasingly leading to a society in which views are imputed to people who may not believe them, while politicians act as though people have those views, without having good reason to believe that people actually hold them. Together, GIS has been associated with a recasting of the public and the private in ways that render the political much less viable.

Data protection and intellectual property: information systems and the Americanization of the new Europe

The introduction of computer-based information systems into the newly emerging democracies—and markets—of Central and Eastern Europe raises important questions. With information seen by many in government and industry as the gold of the future, it is not surprising that it is common in the West to see it as essential that those countries adopt regulations that will encourage its relatively unfettered flow. In fact, in the key areas of data protection and intellectual property we can see strong indications of Western influence. But this is occurring in different ways. In the case of data protection, US influence has been brought to bear through intermediaries, particularly the European Community. In the case of intellectual property, the United States has acted more directly. In both cases, though, the United States is promoting what it sees as its own values despite their being in important ways at odds with those not simply of Central and Eastern Europe but of Europe more generally.

Time and Narrative in Economic Geography

There are two types of dynamic models found within economic geography—the statistical and the causal. Both rest on a view of time which is based upon chronology and sequence. It is argued, however, that a chronological and sequential view of time is inadequate to comprehend the nature of economic behaviour. Instead, it is suggested that economic geographers begin thinking about time from the perspective of narrative.

On rationality: Contemporary geography and the search for the foolproof method

Abstract Recent works on geographic explanation rest on an almost unanimous belief in the existence of a universal, discoverable form of rationality. At the same time, works in other disciplines — notably anthropology and the philosophy and history of science — are more circumspect; they suggest that there may be several or even many types of rationality. Because the question of the nature of rationality has decided implications insofar as other issues — of relativism, for example — are concerned, it is worth considering in more detail. Analysis suggests that those who believe in a universal form of rationality more fundamentally are expressing a desire for the creation of a foolproof method in geography, one based in part on a deep-seated but unquestioned belief in progress.