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The limits of GIS: Towards a GIS of place
Author(s) -
Giordano Alberto,
Cole Tim
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
transactions in gis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.721
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9671
pISSN - 1361-1682
DOI - 10.1111/tgis.12342
Subject(s) - the holocaust , set (abstract data type) , perspective (graphical) , dimension (graph theory) , scope (computer science) , geography , sociology , epistemology , data science , computer science , artificial intelligence , political science , mathematics , philosophy , pure mathematics , law , programming language
In this article we reflect back on our decade‐long collaboration on the geographies of the Holocaust to argue for a GIS of place. Our previous work on ghettoization in Budapest and on the spatio‐temporal patterns of Jewish persecution in Italy had a marked spatial dimension, both in the research questions we set out to answer and the methods we used, which were largely quantitative. During the course of our research, we progressively came to realize that a spatial perspective favors the voice of the perpetrator and that to fully comprehend and understand the geography of the Holocaust, we needed to engage with the voice of the victim, extend the set of methods and tools used, and broaden our epistemology. While proposing a fully‐fledged model of a qualitative GIS of the places and spaces of the Holocaust is beyond the scope of this article, we: (a) argue for the integration of social network analysis, corpus linguistics, and spatio‐temporal methods and for a mixed‐methods analytical approach and (b) note how the topological and relational foundations we identify as fundamental to a GIS of place parallel the long‐standing call for an “integrated history” of the Holocaust.