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Geographical Imaginations and Nation Building:
Façonner les gens et les territoires au Canada,
de 1871 à aujourd’huiTracey P. Lauriault
orcid.org/0000-0003-1847-2738 [email protected]
Colloque International: Le CHIFFRE et la CARTE
Université du Québec à Montréal, Salle PK-1140
Vendredi 22 septembre, 10 h 45-12 h 15
orcid.org/0000-0003-1847-2738
orcid.org/0000-0003-1847-2738
orcid.org/0000-0003-1847-2738
Central Argument
Canadian reality is conditioned by government generated data and the related infrastructures that produce them.
Data and infrastructures shape and are shaped by geographic imaginations.
Geographic imaginations have real material effects as they produce knowledge, spaces and subjects which are acted
upon.
• Atlas of Canada
• 1906-Present
• “ A portrait of Canada ”
• Census of Canada
• 1871-2011
• “ The stock taking of the people ”
Case Studies
Lens
• Data, maps and infrastructure are socially constructed (Hughes, Hetch & Thad Allen, Marvin & Graham, Star and Ruhleder, Latour)
• The Atlas of Canada and census are biopower in action (Foucault)
• The Atlas of Canada and the census, and their infrastructures are biopolitical objects which produce subjects to be governed - they are gouvernementale (Foucault)
Objective
Premise: Government manages territory and people, Atlas and census help perform that function by ‘making up spaces
and people’ and by doing so constructing geographic imaginations.
Empirically assess if the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada shape geographical imaginations.
• Modify the Ian Hacking framework of dynamically ‘making up people’
• Apply the ‘making up spaces’ modified Hacking framework to the analysis of the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada
• Critically examine the discourse of data, maps and infrastructure – infrastructural inversion (Bowker)
Methodology
Data and maps are technological and scientific products, interrogated according to the norms of the scientific
messages they convey as well as the social contexts of their emergence, dissemination and use (Pickles, Harley, Latour).
• Data and maps are socio-technological objects (Hughes)
• Maps & data are knowledge representations, inscriptions and immutable mobiles (Latour)
• Maps and data are arrangements of “facts within a specific cultural perspective” (Harley)
• Atlas of Canada and Census of Canada are infrastructural work (Curtis)
• Lead to a kind of mechanical objectivity (Porter) which exerts power at a distance (Latour)
Data
Technopolitical Regime – grounded in institutions, linked sets of people, engineering and industrial practices, technological
artifacts, political programs and institutional ideologies which act together to govern technological development and pursue
technopolitics (Hetch)
• Story telling system (Kim & Ball-Rokeach)
• Implicated in the “cultural construction of space” (Dourish & Bell)
• Information ecology (Nardy & O’Day)
• Properties of infrastructure – ethnographic view (Star & Ruhleder)
• Inscription devices & black box (Latour)
• Large technopolitical regimes (Hetch) with momentum (Hughes, Feenberg) exhibiting infrastructural determinism (Lauriault & Lenczner)
• Invisible, human built technological fabric of society (Hayes)
Data Infrastructures
Is gouvernementale, biopolitical & a socio-technopoliticalstate formation activity that helps construct geographical
imaginations
Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI)
CGDI
Geographic Imaginations
Joseph Campbell “the society of the Planet” from the Power of the Myth in reference to the Blue Marble Image released by NASA in 1972
Said - Orientalism
Cosgrove - Appollo’s Eye
Anderson - Imagined Communities
Lefebvre - The Production of Space
Debarbieux - Imagination et imaginaire géographiques
Wright - Terrae Incognitae
Tang - The Geographic Imagination of Modernity
Schulten - The Geographical Imagination in America 1880-1950
Winichakul - Geo-body
Geographic ImaginationsData as representations/inscriptions of space & infrastructure as spatial practice construct imaginations of space & condition practices in space.
“worlds where real elements are arranged and introduced in an interpretable system whereby individuals or collectivities on one side and the earth on the other are harmoniously arranged in a coherent fashion”
(Debarbieux)
Geography formed an epistemic apparatus of collecting and processing spatial data in the service of the state, theoretical discourse provided the
nation with an imaginary identity by interpreting national culture and history as the result of people’s engagement with the singular conditions,
structures, and processes of their terrestrial habitats (Tang)
How scientific classification brings into being new kinds of people who conceive and perceive themselves as that kind
1. The category or classification and the category and classification as an object
2. How it came into being
3. How it becomes a convention
4. What is actually being measured
5. And how the thing measured gets put to work
Hacking – Framework of ‘making up people’
Hacking ‘Making up People’ Framework
5 Interactive Elements of the Looping Effect
7 Engines of Discovery3 Derived Engines
Classification & Material Effects
Detail of Halifax map extracted from Plate 39, 1st Edition of the
Atlas of Canada (1906) showing the location of the Insane and the Poor
Asylums
Infirmities Category of Unsound Mind, Schedule 1
Nominal Return of the Living of the 1871 Census, Nova
Scotia (CCRI, 2012)
Resisting a spatial arrangement
Modified Framework ‘Making up Spaces’
Examples
The World, 2nd Edition Atlas of Canada, Circa 1914
Atlas of Canada - Case Study
1. National Atlas Defined
(Harley, Schulten, Ackerman, Monmonier, Salichtchev, Brouillette, IGU, Nicholson, Symons, Taylor, Groot, Edney, Buckley, Vasquez de Maure)
2. Atlas of Canada
• institutions
• knowledge
• experts
• scientification
• normalization
• bureaucratization
James White , Chief Geographer (6000e & 2000f)
Joseph Epiphane Chalifour, the Chief Geographer
Norman Nicholson, Chair of the Atlas Committee (7000e 5000f)
Many theme Editors (300 000 per month)
Multiple Editors (1220e 353f sold)
Gerald Fremlin, Editor in Chief (13000e 2000f)
3. Atlas of Canada Content
Atlas Content Groupings
Examined the particularities of classifying to assess if spaces were made up, specifically these aspects of the Hacking framework:
• counting
• quantifying
• norms
• correlation
• taking action and
• scientification
• 3 derived engines & the 5 elements
1. Relief – fundamental layer
2. Forest – biogeographical feature of vegetation
3. Communication Infrastructure – human built feature
4. Territorial Evolution – shape and extent of the territory
4 Map Topics
4. a) Relief
1st Edition 2nd Edition 3rd Edition
4th Edition
5th Edition
6th Edition
Fremlin’s Relief Profiles, 4th edition
4. b) Forest
6th Edition
3rd Edition
4th Edition
1st Edition 2nd Edition
5th Edition
4. c) Communication Infrastructure
1st Edition 2nd Edition3rd Edition
4th Edition
5th Edition
Echoes of the past
Emergence of the concept of a
new America
Depicting how the north east
took shape
Showing how the Arctic coasts
were gradually revealed
Development of Knowledge of the west coast
Stephanius 1590 La Cosa 1500 Mercator 1595 De Laet 1630
Behaim 1492 Caneiro 1502-04 Foxe 1635 Anonymous 1574
Ruysch 1508 Descelier 1550 Franklin 1823 Cook 1784
Waldseemüller 1507
Ribero 1529 British Admiralty
1835 Arrowsmith 1822
Agnese 1540 Velasco 1610 British Admiralty
1874
Ptolemy, 1548 Edition
Zaltieri 1566
Eastern Interior Western Interior Knowledge about the
Cordillera and the Pacific Coast
Champlain 1632 Delisle 1750 and Buache
1754 Combined Arrowsmith 1857 and
Russel 1868 Combined
Dollier and Galiné 1680 Pond 1787 Delabat 1710
Franquelin 1699 Thompson 1814 Duberger
Pre-Confederation Treaties Post-Confederation Treaties
Friendship Treaties Area 14 Numbered Treaties
Upper Canada Treaties Area William’s Treaties
Province of Canada Treaties Treaty Boundaries
Vancouver Island Treaties Treaty Adhesion boundaries
5th Edition Treaties Map
4. d) Territorial Evolution
6th Edition
1st Edition
2nd Edition
3rd Edition
4th Edition
5th Edition
Census of Canada - Case Study
1. Census History and Definition
2. Census of Canada
NOTE: The
Long-form
census is re-
instated and
taken in 2016
3. Census of Canada Question
• Examined 2 classifications across time
• Citizenship and Immigration
• Official Language
• All elements & engines of the Hacking’s framework
4. 2 Topics
4. a) Citizenship & Immigration
4. a) Citizenship & Immigration cntd.
4. b) Official Languages
4 b.) Mother Tongues of the Population
Map, B & B,Commission, Book I 1967
4. b) Bilingual districts & Board
4.b) Imagining the geolinguistic landscape
• Atlas of Canada and ‘making up spaces’
• Census of Canada and ‘making up spaces’
• Socio-Technopolitics, Gouvernementalité and Biopower
• Hacking’s Framework and Geography
• Conclusion
Conclusion