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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Katy Middlebrough Centre Administration Team ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS) University of Manchester, Dover Street Building, Dover Street, Manchester, M13 9PL Tel: 0161 275 1383 Email: [email protected] Fax: 0161 275 1390 Web: http://www.ncess.ac.uk Email updates: http://www.ncess.ac.uk/newsletter From: Andreas Dafinger [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 23 April 2006 18:51 To: [email protected] Subject: Workshop Geographic Visualization Across the Social Sciences Dr Andreas Dafinger Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany Leverhulme Fellow, University of Manchester www.dafinger.de/eth www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/socialanthropology/staff/AndreasDa finger.htm (contact details below) Dear Katy, I just learned about the upcoming workshop and was truly excited –as the theme is right on the topic of my own research. I do apologise for having ‘stretched’ the deadline – this has been a couple of busy days despite the holidays; so I just hope you will still consider my proposal. I am a research staff at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany, currently as a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the School of Social Sciences/Anthropology at Manchester. In my research I focus on issues of spatial and social order (i.e. the representation of social norms through spatial arrangements). My publications on the topic include a book (‘The Anthropology of Space’ – in German) and several articles (in English). I have been teaching on spatial anthropology at Universities in Germany and the US. In my presentation I intend to a) give examples of how I employed spatial approaches in my anthropological work and how I integrated spatial analysis into a more general anthropological methodology. Based on these examples I want to b) discuss the specific possibilities GIS offers for anthropological research (in terms of presentation and communication) as well as methodologically, and then, most importantly, elaborate on the obstacles in integrating GIS into theestablished set of anthropological core methods, to eventually discuss solutions to the dilemma. GIS and spatial analysis are some of the most powerful tools that can be added to the anthropologist’s toolbox; in my own research I successfully employed the space syntax model (Hillier/CASA) to decipher local social structures, which are based on the fusion of kinship and local group formation, and are only decipherable through the spatial analysis of homesteads and neighbourhoods. On a wider scale, I used maps as a research tool, by mapping linguistic, economic, social, political data and basing interviews on the preliminary findings of these mapping processes: essential information was only retrievable through the use of mapping and the space syntax model. On the other hand, computer aided mapping and GIS are not easily incorporated in the anthropological mainstream. Anthropology defines itself - like no other discipline in the humanities - through its key methodology, the (as Geertz called it, oxymoron of )‘participant observation’. The anthropologist is at the same time researcher and his or her most important tool. As a consequence an obsession with qualitative data, and a general aversion against anything quantifiable seems paradigmatic for the whole discipline. Using maps, mapping, (leave alone GIS) as part of the methods employed in the data gaining process is often restricted to development-oriented approaches, and when used in other fields, is often considered suspicious and on many occasions even seen as incompatible with ‘solid research’. Map making is generally outsourced (to geographers working as cartographers) and –sarcastically speaking– anthropologists presenting their own maps evidently seemed to have too much spare time that better should have been spent on obtaining ‘real data’. This is often revealed in the way anthropologists make use of ‘advanced’ technology such as GPS and mapping software, and the stunning naïveté many anthropologists gather GPS-data en passant, together with a strong reluctance to redesign the research process. This can –possibly- be addressed by acknowledging the possibilities of geographic and other spatial representation in the anthropological field from the onset of anthropological education / studies: spatial anthropology still needs to be established as a subfield in anthropological methodology. So whereas my examples focus on the ‘spatial properties of networks’, the full paper crosscuts several of the workshop’s topics, and also addresses issues ‘geographical representation in teaching’ and ‘ethical considerations’. I am looking forward to hearing from you Best, Andreas Contact details Dr Andreas Dafinger Social Anthropology School of Social Sciences (Room 2.54 Williamson Bldg.) The University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL Tel: 0161 275 3990