New Pre-Publication: Operating Anew: Queering GIS with Good Enough Software

I am excited to share the pre-print for my article, “Operating Anew: Queering GIS with Good Enough Software.” This piece will be part of the 2018 special issue “Speculative and Constructively Critical GIS,” edited by  Jim Thatcher, Luke R. Bergmann, David O’Sullivan for The Canadian Geographer / Le Géopgraphe Canadien. Disappointed by SSRN’s purchase by Elsevier, I’m only loading this piece to Socarxiv to see if the downloads are comparable and not support a press that has made so much money from and given so little back to the academic community in comparison.

Download “Operating Anew: Queering GIS with Good Enough Software” here.

ABSTRACT

In the last decade, conversations around queering of GIScience emerged. Drawing on literature from feminist and queer critical GIS with special attention to the under-examined political economy of GIS, I suggest that the critical project of queering all of GIS, both GIScience and GISystems, requires not just recognition of the labor and lives of queers and research in geographies of sexualities. Based upon a queer feminist political economic critique and evidenced in my teaching critical GIS at two elite liberal arts colleges, I argue that “status quo” between ESRI and geography as a field must be interrupted. Extending a critical GIS focus beyond data structures and data ethics, I argue that geographic researchers and instructors have a responsibility in queering our choice and production of software, algorithms, and code alike. I call this production and choice of democratic, accessible, and useful software by, for, and about the needs of its users good enough software. Instead, I argue that “status quo” between ESRI and geography as a field must be interrupted.