Abstract
GIS is a powerful technology with useful but limited application to history as practiced by most historians, appealing primarily to scholars who employ quantitative data and methods. But the spatial turn, especially as it is influenced by Web 2.0 technologies and practices, has resulted in a new hybridization of geo-spatial technologies that promise to reshape the discipline of history in ways reflective of postmodern concerns and epistemologies. In this new form, geo-spatial technologies are better equipped to construct the spatial narratives and deep maps that permit, indeed encourage, the sort of reflexive, recursive, and collaborative environments that will mark history in the future.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For more on this earlier spatial turn, see Kern (1983).
- 3.
See the interview with Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in this book to learn more about the Annales.
- 4.
- 5.
Michel de Certeau reminds us that “space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize it, and make it function as a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs or contractual proximities.” And stories are the constructive means we use to transform spaces into places or places into spaces. See de Certeau (1984, 117–118).
- 6.
See Knowles (2008a) for a good sample of the application of GIS to various topics in the humanities. Also see the special issue of The International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, vol 3, no. 1–2, 2009, which is devoted to the use of GIS in a number of humanities disciplines.
- 7.
See also Ayers et al.’s contribution in this book.
- 8.
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/how-theory-damaged-the-humanities/6178, last accessed 27 Oct 2011.
- 9.
- 10.
A good brief introduction to the various forms of virtual geographic environments—3D models and 2.5D extruded surfaces, computer animations, interactive models, virtual globes, online virtual worlds, games, and semi- or fully immersive virtual reality—can be found in Priestnall et al. (2012).
- 11.
http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Forum/, last accessed on 1 Aug 2008
- 12.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_kacyra_ancient_wonders_captured_in_3d.html, last accessed 3 Jan 2012
- 13.
http://www.virtualjamestown.org, last accessed on 14 Aug 2008
- 14.
- 15.
Also see Bodenhamer (2008).
- 16.
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Bodenhamer, D.J. (2013). Beyond GIS: Geospatial Technologies and the Future of History. In: von Lünen, A., Travis, C. (eds) History and GIS. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5009-8_1
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