THEORIZING WITH GIS A TOOL FOR CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES.pdfVIP

THEORIZING WITH GIS: A TOOL FOR CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES? Marianna Pavlovskaya Department of Geography Hunter College - CUNY New York, NY 10021 E-mail: mpavlov@. Forthcoming Environment and Planning A Submitted for publication March 2004 Accepted with minor revisions November 26, 2004 Revised April 2005, accepted April 18, 2005 C:\articles\GIS and Qual\Pavlovskaya Theorizing with GIS revised 1.doc 5/4/2005 11:34 AM ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank Kevin St.Martin and three anonymous reviewers for insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper. My quantitative colleagues at Hunter College and other universities kindly answered questions regarding their use of GIS. Writing time for this paper was supported by the NSF funded Gender Equity Project at Hunter College. Theorizing with GIS Marianna Pavlovskaya ABSTRACT This article explores the potential of using GIS in qualitative research by disentangling the seemingly rigid association of the field of geographic information science with quantitative geography. I examine the opposition between quantitative and qualitative methods as an extension of different epistemologies and not their innate incompatibility and re-position GIS within these methods seen as a continuum. I show that the always assumed alignment of GIS with quantitative research has never been complete and the many openings in GIS enable qualitative research. I also discuss how critical geographers can engage with and transform GIS as well as enhance their explanations and social theory in general by represent