Toward Spatial Humanities

Description

Applying geo-spatial methods to history

The application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to issues in history is among the most exciting developments in both digital and spatial humanities. Describing a wide variety of applications, the essays in this volume highlight the methodological and substantive implications of a spatial approach to history. They illustrate how the use of GIS is changing our understanding of the geographies of the past and has become the basis for new ways to study history. Contributors focus on current developments in the use of historical sources and explore the insights gained by applying GIS to develop historiography. Toward Spatial Humanities is a compelling demonstration of how GIS can contribute to our historical understanding.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: From Historical GIS to Spatial Humanities: Deepening Scholarship and Broadening Technology / Ian N. Gregory and Alistair Y. Geddes
Part One: Deeping Scholarship: Developing the Historiography through Spatial History
1. Railways and Agriculture in France and Great Britain, 1850 to 1914 / Robert M. Schwartz and Thomas Thevenin
2. The Development, Persistence and Change of Racial Segregation in United States Urban Areas: 1880 to 2010 / Andrew A. Beveridge
3. Troubled Geographies: An Historical GIS of Religion, Society and Conflict in Ireland since the Great Famine / Niall Cunningham
Part 2: Broadening Scholarship: Applying HGIS in New Ways
4. Applying Historical GIS beyond the Academy: Four Use Cases for the Great Britain HGIS / Humphrey R. Southall
5. The Politics of Territory in Song Dynasty China (960-1276 CE) / Elijah Meeks and Ruth Mostern
6. Mapping the City in Film / Julia Hallam and Les Roberts
7. Conclusions: From Historical GIS to Spatial Humanities: Challenges and Opportunities / Ian N. Gregory and Alistair Y. Geddes
8. Further Reading: From Historical GIS to Spatial Humanities: An Evolving Literature / Ian N. Gregory
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Human Geography
• Social Science
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Regional geography
• General officer
• Social sciences
• World
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 14 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253011909
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

Toward Spatial Humanities
T HE S PATIAL H UMANITIES
David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris, editors
Geographies of the Holocaust, Edited by Anne Kelly Knowles, Tim Cole, and Alberto Giordano
Locating the Moving Image: New Approaches to Film and Place , Edited by Julia Hallam and Les Roberts
The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship, Edited by David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris
Troubled Geographies: A Spatial History of Religion and Society in Ireland, Ian N. Gregory, Niall A. Cunningham, C. D. Lloyd, Ian G. Shuttleworth, and Paul S. Ell
TOWARD SPATIAL HUMANITIES
HISTORICAL GIS AND SPATIAL HISTORY
EDITED BY IAN N. GREGORY AND ALISTAIR GEDDES
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone [phone] Fax [phone]
2014 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Toward spatial humanities : historical GIS and spatial history / edited by Ian N. Gregory and Alistair Geddes.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01180-0 (cloth : alkaline paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01186-2 (paperback : alkaline paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01190-9 (ebook) 1. Historiography - Methodology. 2. Geographic information systems. 3. History - Sources. 4. Historical geography - Methodology. 5. History - Data processing. I. Gregory, Ian N. II. Geddes, A. (Alistair)
D16.T74 2014
910.285 - dc23
2013037075
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: From Historical GIS to Spatial Humanities: Deepening Scholarship and Broadening Technology Ian N. Gregory and Alistair Geddes
PART 1. DEEPENING SCHOLARSHIP: DEVELOPING HISTORIOGRAPHY THROUGH SPATIAL HISTORY
1. Railways and Agriculture in France and Great Britain, 1850-1914 Robert M. Schwartz and Thomas Thevenin
2. The Development, Persistence, and Change of Racial Segregation in U.S. Urban Areas, 1880-2010 Andrew A. Beveridge
3. Troubled Geographies: A Historical GIS of Religion, Society, and Conflict in Ireland since the Great Famine Niall Cunningham
PART 2. BROADENING TECHNOLOGY: APPLYING GIS TO NEW SOURCES AND DISCIPLINES
4. Applying Historical GIS beyond the Academy: Four Use Cases for the Great Britain HGIS Humphrey R. Southall
5. The Politics of Territory in Song Dynasty China, 960-1276 CE Elijah Meeks and Ruth Mostern
6. Mapping the City in Film Julia Hallam and Les Roberts
7. Conclusions: From Historical GIS to Spatial Humanities: Challenges and Opportunities Ian N. Gregory and Alistair Geddes
8. Further Reading: From Historical GIS to Spatial Humanities: An Evolving Literature Ian N. Gregory
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
WE EXPRESS OUR SINCERE GRATITUDE TO ALL OF THE CONTRIBUTORS for their efforts and speedy replies to our requests and queries. The work was strengthened as a result of detailed anonymous review, and we thank those involved in that process. The series editors - David Bodenhamer especially - gave sagacious advice, and we benefited from guidance of Darja Malcolm-Clarke, Dan Pyle, Robert Sloan, and Jenna Whittaker, all at Indiana University Press. We are also very grateful to Mary M. Hill for undertaking the copyediting. Others gave their support and kindness unstintingly: Alistair would particularly like to thank Jen and Robin Flowerdew.
The groundwork for this book came as a result of an Economic and Social Research Council ( ESRC ) Seminar Series Grant, The Historical GIS Research Network ( RES -451-25-4307). Its completion benefited from support from the European Research Council ( ERC ) under the European Union s Seventh Framework Programme ( FP 7/2007-2013)/ ERC Grant Spatial Humanities: Texts, GIS , Places (agreement number 283850).
Introduction: From Historical GIS to Spatial Humanities: Deepening Scholarship and Broadening Technology
IAN N. GR EGORY AND ALISTAIR GEDDES
WHEN GEOGR APHICAL INFOR MATION SYSTEMS (GIS) FIRST began to be used by academic geographers in the late 1980s, their use was nothing if not controversial. Proponents of the new field argued that it had the potential to reinvigorate geography as a discipline under a more computational paradigm. 1 Opponents argued that it marked a lurch toward an unacceptable form of positivism with no epistemology or treatment of ethical or political issues. 2 One thing on which they both agreed - or perhaps took for granted - was that GIS was a quantitative technology that was to be used in a social scientific manner (to its supporters) or a positivist way (to its antagonists).
When GIS first began to be used by historians it was not surprising that much of the early focus was also quantitative and social science based. It is no coincidence that the first special issue of a journal dedicated to historical GIS ( HGIS ), published in Social Science History, included essays on topics such as fertility, migration, urban history, and economic growth, all well suited to quantitative analysis. 3 In 2008, eight years after this issue was published, a conference devoted to HGIS was held at the University of Essex. 4 It attracted 125 delegates, with papers organized in 21 sessions. While some of these sessions were themed on topics that still had a strong quantitative bent - demography, urban history, environmental history, transport, and so on - there was also an increasing number of papers and sessions that concentrated on topics that were clearly qualitative and did not follow traditional social science paradigms. These topics included art, performance culture, literature, the Bible, and medieval and early modern history. What was happening in the quantitative sessions was also interesting. Rather than concentrating on issues associated with database construction and potential applications, many of these papers had developed to focus on conducting applied works of history - studies that developed the historiography by answering applied research questions. This was an indication of two emerging trends within HGIS that have continued since: HGIS is deepening from an applied perspective, and it is broadening from a technical perspective. It is deepening in that it has reached a stage where researchers apply it to scholarship that develops new knowledge about the past. This must be the ultimate aim of the field, as it takes HGIS beyond a narrow technical specialism and makes it relevant to a much wider audience. HGIS is also broadening its technical scope in terms of the ever-widening potential for its application to both qualitative and quantitative sources. This means that GIS is thus able to expand beyond social science history - a fairly narrow field - to be applicable to the discipline more broadly, and beyond that to spread outside the disciplinary boundaries of history into other humanities disciplines.
GIS AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH
There are many different definitions of GIS and related terms such as GIS c (Geographical Information Science). 5 The emergence of new geospatial technologies such as Google Earth that do not fit traditional definitions only complicates these definitions. Originally, GIS was considered as the umbrella term for the field, and it is often still used in this way. The more recent trend, however, has been to use GIS to describe the tools offered, while GIS c emphasizes the broader understanding of how these tools can be developed, used, and applied. 6
To take this further, GIS can be thought of as a type of software that provides a way of representing features on the Earth s surface and a suite of operations that allow the researcher to query, manipulate, visualize, and analyze these representations. The representations, or data models, combine two types of data: attribute data, which were traditionally held in a table and tend - or perhaps tended - to be quantitative, and spatial data, which locate each item of data using a point, a line, a polygon (which represents an area or a zone), or a pixel. Points, lines, and polygons are used to represent discrete features, and data in these formats are referred to as vector data, while pixels are used to represent continuous surfaces and are referred to as raster data. 7 In this way the attribute data say what, while the spatial data say where. Thus, from this perspective GIS is a type of software that allows the user to store, retrieve, visualize, and analyze data that are georeferenced to a location on the Earth s surface. 8 GIS allows researchers to ask questions about their topics or sources that stress the importance of location and thus geography. This emphasis on geography, combined with the tools to represent and explore georeferenced data, is what allows scholars to conduct their research in new ways.
This approach to defining GIS leads to the conclusion that a Geographic Information System is really a database for managing georeferenced