17
This article was downloaded by: [Universitaetsbibliothek Heidelberg] On: 16 November 2014, At: 11:18 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Annals of the Association of American Geographers Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raag20 The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS Jason C. Young a & Michael P. Gilmore b a Department of Geography , University of Washington b New Century College, George Mason University Published online: 04 Sep 2012. To cite this article: Jason C. Young & Michael P. Gilmore (2013) The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103:4, 808-823, DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2012.707596 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2012.707596 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

This article was downloaded by: [Universitaetsbibliothek Heidelberg]On: 16 November 2014, At: 11:18Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Annals of the Association of American GeographersPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raag20

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion inParticipatory GISJason C. Young a & Michael P. Gilmore ba Department of Geography , University of Washingtonb New Century College, George Mason UniversityPublished online: 04 Sep 2012.

To cite this article: Jason C. Young & Michael P. Gilmore (2013) The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS,Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103:4, 808-823, DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2012.707596

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2012.707596

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion inParticipatory GIS

Jason C. Young∗ and Michael P. Gilmore†

∗Department of Geography, University of Washington†New Century College, George Mason University

Researchers have traditionally used participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) projects to injectindigenous voices into the political sphere as they work for various legal rights. Due to their participatory nature,however, these projects can also have complex effects on the emotional and affective well-being of participatingcommunities. This article examines how the authors’ participatory research with the Maijuna people of thePeruvian Amazon resulted in many positive, affective, and emotional results outside of the final map product.Although the project was initiated as an attempt to produce a map that the Maijuna could use in pursuit of landrights, methodological choices made by the authors also produced positive emotions in participants, politicalbonding, and community-wide education. While their importance to the political momentum of marginalizedcommunities cannot be overstated, geographers have yet to fully problematize the relationship between theseaffective and emotional results and their own methodological choices. This article argues that researchers shouldbegin engaging in more affective and emotional thinking when constructing their research methodologies, toboth improve the results of their project and to mitigate potential problems. Key Words: affect, emotions,indigenous politics, methodology, participatory GIS, qualitative GIS.

������������������,���������������� (PGIS)��,���������

�����������������,��������������������������������

������������ (Maijuna)�����������,�����������,��������

�������������������������������������, �� ���������

���������������������������� ������������������

�������,���������������������������������������,

������������, ������������������, ����������������

���������:��,��,�����,���,���������,��������

Tradicionalmente los investigadores han utilizado proyectos de sistemas de informacion geografica participativos(SIGP) para inyectar vocerıa indıgena en la esfera polıtica a medida que ellos propenden por varios derechoslegales. Sin embargo, debido a su naturaleza participativa, estos proyectos tambien pueden tener efectos complejosen el bienestar emocional y afectivo de las comunidades participantes. Este artıculo examina como la investigacionparticipativa de los autores con el pueblo maijuna de la Amazonia peruana dio lugar a muchas cosas positivas,afectivas y emocionales, mas alla del producto cartografico final. Aunque el proyecto se inicio como un intentode producir un mapa que los maijuna pudiesen usar en su lucha por los derechos a la tierra, las seleccionesmetodologicas hechas por los autores tambien generaron emociones positivas entre los participantes, lazospolıticos afectivos y educacion a nivel general de la comunidad. Si bien su importancia para el momento polıticode comunidades marginadas no puede ser exagerada, los geografos todavıa estan en mora de problematizarcompletamente la relacion entre estos resultados afectivos y emocionales con sus propias opciones metodologicas.Este artıculo argumenta que los investigadores deben empezar a adoptar una postura mas afectivo y emocional alconstruir sus metodologıas de investigacion, para mejorar los resultados de sus proyectos y para atenuar problemaspotenciales. Palabras clave: afecto, emociones, polıticas indigenistas, metodologıa, SIG participativo, SIG cualitativo.

Amiddle-aged man crouches down over a largehand-drawn map, his eyes sparkling with ex-citement as he peers down at the new creation.

Fellow community members, from young boys to elder

women, crowd in on either side of him, waiting for himto speak. Slowly he begins, addressing the video camerasitting across from him. In his indigenous language, andthen in Spanish, he recounts his people’s proud history

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(4) 2013, pp. 808–823 C© 2013 by Association of American GeographersInitial submission, February 2011; revised submissions, November 2011, April 2012; final acceptance, April 2012

Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 3: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS 809

and the enduring connection that they have with therainforest in which they live. He goes on to explain howthey, as a community, have inscribed some of this his-tory and knowledge into the map around which they sit.He then guides the camera through the map, highlight-ing important sites and praising the beautiful artistrythat went into its creation. Toward the end of the nar-rative, the camera pans out, capturing images of theother community members leaning in around the map,each smiling and admiring it. As soon as the camera isswitched off, the children rush around it, begging to seeimages of themselves played back.

The preceding scene took place in 2008 in theMaijuna indigenous community of Nueva Vida in thenortheastern Peruvian Amazon. The Maijuna are awestern Tucanoan people that have traditionally in-habited this part of the Amazon Basin (Steward 1946;Bellier 1993, 1994). Currently, there are approximately400 Maijuna individuals living in the communities ofNueva Vida and Puerto Huaman along the Yanay-acu River, San Pablo de Totoya (Totolla) along theAlgodon River, and Sucusari along the Sucusari River(Figure 1). The residents of these communities carry outa variety of subsistence strategies, including hunting,fishing, swidden-fallow agriculture, and the gathering ofa wide variety of forest products. The four Maijuna com-munities are recognized as Comunidades Nativas (NativeCommunities) by the Peruvian government and eachhas legal title to the land surrounding its respectivecommunity (Brack-Egg 1998). Unfortunately, the landthe Maijuna have been titled represents only a smallportion of their ancestral territory; hundreds of thou-sands of hectares remain outside of their direct con-trol (Gilmore 2010). Additionally, Maijuna ancestrallands are currently under threat from illegal poach-ing and logging by outsiders. Even more troubling, thePeruvian government is planning to construct a 130-km-long road, with a 5-km development corridor toeither side of it, directly through the heart of Mai-juna ancestral territory (Figure 1; Gilmore et al. 2010;Vriesendorp and Foster 2010). This plan, along withthe subsequent influx of colonists that would flow intothe area, would irreversibly alter the ecological fabricof Maijuna ancestral lands and negatively impact theircurrent way of life.

Not surprisingly, the Maijuna adamantly oppose thisdevelopment scheme and are calling on the GobiernoRegional de Loreto (GOREL), the regional governmentof the Peruvian Amazon, to create a regional conserva-tion area that would legally protect more than 336,000

hectares of their ancestral lands and associated biocul-tural resources (Figure 1; Gilmore 2010; Gilmore et al.2010). To achieve this, the Maijuna invited the au-thors into their communities to help create a geographicinformation system (GIS) that demonstrates the his-torical connection that they have with their ancestrallands. In fact, the earlier scene describes the making ofa video of Liberato, a Nueva Vida resident, describingthe participatory map that his community created forthis project. By connecting the narratives of Liberatoand other Maijuna individuals to their ancestral landsand then populating a GIS with this representation, wehoped to engage the Peruvian government in a politi-cal dialogue that could help the Maijuna to achieve thecreation of a regional conservation area. Using partici-patory mapping and GIS in this way, to aid indigenouspeoples in getting their voices heard in a wider politicalsphere, is not uncommon, and the technique has beensuccessfully used in many indigenous political move-ments throughout the world (e.g., Herlihy and Knapp2003; Smith 2003; Duncan 2006; Dunn 2007; Corbettand Rambaldi 2009).

Our beginning narrative, however, hints at anotheroutcome that these projects can have for communities.Instead of merely being a tool used to engage the gov-ernment, the mapping process itself can have equallyimportant, but less easily represented, effects on thoseinvolved. In our case, the Maijuna demonstrated emo-tions like pride, bonded politically, and educated oneanother with different views on their shared history.Nevertheless, geographers have not scrutinized the re-lationship between mapping processes and these emo-tional and affective results to a great degree. In thisarticle we argue that it is critical to better understandthese emotional and affective by-products of participa-tory mapping and GIS work; after all, the final mapproduct is far more effective when the community thatcreated it is mobilized and excited to use it. To makethis argument, we first briefly describe our work withthe Maijuna within a broader history of participatorymapping and GIS. From there we begin a three-partdiscussion of the affective and emotional dimensionsof participatory GIS (PGIS) by problematizing currentconceptualizations of empowerment within the PGISliterature, developing a model for understanding emo-tion and affect, and applying this model to our experi-ences with the Maijuna. Finally, we conclude with someparting thoughts on how our reconceptualized under-standing of PGIS methodologies can strengthen futureGIS endeavors.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 4: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

810 Young and Gilmore

Figure 1. Map of study area illustrat-ing the Maijuna communities, titledMaijuna lands, proposed conservationarea, and proposed development corri-dor. The borders of the proposed con-servation area were informed by themapping work detailed in this articleand were developed in consultationwith the Maijuna, regional governmen-tal institutions, and nongovernmentalorganizations. It is currently being usedby the Maijuna and their allies to pro-mote their vision of a proposed con-servation area. (Color figure availableonline.)

A Methodology for Participatory Mappingand GIS

Our goal in working with the Maijuna was to create amap that would help them to push for the establishmentof a regional conservation area in their ancestral lands.This mapping project took place during four differentfield seasons, between 2004 and 2009, and mapping wascompleted sequentially in the communities of Sucusari,Puerto Huaman, Nueva Vida, and then San Pablo deTotoya (Totolla; Figure 1). We chose to begin the map-

ping project in Sucusari as one of the authors (Gilmore)has conducted community-based research there since1999 and has built significant communal and personalrelationships based on mutual respect and trust.

Notably, participatory mapping has been shownto be an effective means of transforming indigenousspatial knowledge into cartographic forms (Herlihyand Knapp 2003; Corbett and Rambaldi 2009). Geog-raphers began performing participatory mapping afterengaging in broad critiques of cartography in the 1980sand 1990s. These critiques attempted to illuminate

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 5: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS 811

how maps (as representations) and mapping (as a setof practices) act to legitimize very particular ways ofknowing the world at the expense of others. In thisway, then, maps served to inscribe specific (and oftencolonial) power relations by allowing cartographicexperts to territorialize the world as they saw fit (Pickles2003). Participatory mapping thus became a techniqueby which marginalized peoples could contest these po-litical visions of the world with their own countermaps.Although participatory mapping methodologies varybetween projects, they generally include local peoplesin the planning and implementation phases; transformtraditional knowledge into map, graphic, or writtenforms; and produce high degrees of dialogue betweenthe participants and the researchers. The resultingmaps have been used successfully to help indigenouspeoples to achieve goals, including the establishmentof land rights claims, the production of resourcemanagement plans, and the preservation of traditionalknowledge, among others (Gilmore and Young 2010).

Given the methodology’s emphasis on open dialogue,upon arriving in each community we first approachedcommunity leaders to obtain their official permission toproceed. We also asked that a community meeting beheld the next day to describe and discuss the project.From here we visited each Maijuna household to extenda personal invitation to the meeting to each communitymember and to solicit their participation. It is importantto note that after initial mapping work in Sucusari wechose to travel to the other communities with a team ofSucusari participants who had displayed leadership dur-ing their mapping process. This team aided greatly ininitial introductions and during the community meet-ings. In fact, at each initial community meeting, whichwe held both to explain the objectives and methods ofthe project in detail and also to obtain prior informedconsent from the community and each individual par-ticipant, our Sucusari team often took a leading role.The role of the authors, then, became that of techni-cal advisors, responding to the few questions to whichour Maijuna team members did not know the answers.After obtaining prior informed consent from the com-munity and all participants, we began several days ofparticipatory mapping sessions.

One critical element of the participatory mappingsessions was their adoption of the minga, or commu-nal work party, which the Maijuna regularly use toclear agricultural fields, construct houses, or build ca-noes, among other things (Gilmore 2005; Gilmore,Eshbaugh, and Greenberg 2002). During a minga, a hostprovides food and drink to participants in exchange for

labor. To show our respect for communal institutionsand traditions, we embraced the minga format and pro-vided meals to project participants. During the mappingsessions we once again often took a subordinate role toour Sucusari team, who were quite effective in explain-ing the goals and methods of the mapping process, instarting the sessions, and in providing guidance alongthe way. In each case the participants began by map-ping the waterways within their respective river basinsto give the map a physical skeleton that could be usedas a reference system when plotting other sites. Aftercompletion of this reference system, our team explainedthat participants then needed to decide what types ofsocially and biologically important sites they wantedto map. When available, we showed participants mapscreated by the other communities, but we would alsostress that the participants should come up with theirown sites and symbols. Participants would generally be-gin brainstorming symbols for each type of location thatthey were going to map. In the case of Puerto Huamanand San Pablo de Totoya (Totolla), participants wentso far as to have competitions to see whose symbolwould be chosen for the map. In contrast, Nueva Vidaand Sucusari residents chose their best artists and fun-neled ideas to them; afterward they admired and chosethe best idea. After the symbols were chosen, partici-pants would focus on mapping the different sites thatthey deemed significant, including hunting and fishingsites, fruit collection sites, historical areas, fields andhouses, and sacred sites, among others (Figure 2).

Recently, many researchers have worked to trans-form the knowledge represented in participatory mapsinto digital maps, thereby producing a corpus of workunder the titles PGIS and public participation GIS(PPGIS; Sieber 2006). PGIS approaches ask partici-pants to acquire Global Positioning System (GPS) datapoints for those sites that they noted during participa-tory mapping, which can then be used to georeferencetheir map within a GIS. Ideally, this step can help confermore legitimacy on the indigenous map when viewedby government actors, simply because the map appearsmore scientific through its use of an “expert” technology(Duncan 2006; Dunn 2007). Researchers interested innew geovisualization techniques have further increasedthe ability of PGIS projects to accurately depict thevoices of participants by asking how qualitative infor-mation might be included in the quantitative space ofa traditional GIS (Kwan and Knigge 2006; Caquardet al. 2009; Crampton 2009; Elwood 2009; Elwood andCope 2009). This work allows geographers to incorpo-rate highly interactive multimedia stories into GIS to

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 6: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

812 Young and Gilmore

Figure 2. Participants from San Pablo de Totoya (Totolla) addingsignificant sites to their participatory map. (Color figure availableonline.)

allow indigenous peoples to tell their stories throughvideo, photographs, and more (Caquard et al. 2009).With this in mind, our goal became to transform theparticipatory maps of the Maijuna into an interactiveGIS database that would include multimedia that de-picted their strong historical connections to the landaround them.

Therefore, at the end of each of the community map-ping sessions (Figure 3), we selected, with communityinput, a team of Maijuna individuals well known fortheir expertise in traditional cultural, historical, eco-logical, and geographical knowledge to perform PGISwork with our Sucusari team and ourselves. Because ourSucusari team already had experience with the PGISprocess, they were able to help with field logistics andprovide leadership. Each team traveled throughout their

Figure 3. Participants from Nueva Vida surround their completedmap. (Color figure available online.)

respective river basin, acquiring GPS points for each sitetheir community had previously mapped. The teamsalso took photographs of the areas and, when appropri-ate, performed video interviews about the significanceof the site. Maijuna members became very dedicated tothis work and most members quickly became proficientin the use of the technology involved (Figure 4). Bythe end of this project the teams had taken GPS pointsfor over 900 significant sites and had completed videointerviews for dozens of the most important locations.

On completion of the participatory mapping andPGIS sessions, we used all of the data to create a final-ized GIS map for the Maijuna. In addition to plottingthe significant sites, we incorporated links to the videoand audio taken during the fieldwork into the attributetable of the map. Currently the authors are working totransform this GIS into a secure Web application thatcan be more easily accessed by the Maijuna in the future.At this time such access to Web infrastructure would berestricted to Maijuna visits to the nearest city, Iquitos,but the Maijuna nonetheless view an online databaseas a long-term preservation mechanism for traditionalknowledge.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 7: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS 813

Figure 4. Participants from the Su-cusari community learn to use globalpositioning system devices and camerasto record the locations of significantsites. (Color figure available online.)

PGIS and Empowerment

The original goal of this project was to create amap that represents the ties that the Maijuna have totheir ancestral territory, so that the Peruvian govern-ment would recognize their rights to that land. Thisgoal is consistent with the goals of many other re-searchers using PGIS methodologies; these researchersdesign and optimize their methodology to produce amap that can accomplish certain political tasks, manyof which fall under the label of empowerment. Mostworks on PGIS do not explicitly define what empow-erment means within the context of their project, buta few researchers have attempted to construct an an-alytical framework for understanding the term (e.g.,Ramasubramanian 1998; Elwood 2002; Kyem 2002;Corbett and Keller 2006). Elwood (2002), for example,argued that there are three main forms of empowermenttaking place within PGIS projects: distributive change,procedural change, and capacity building. Distributivechange, which involves the achievement of materialchange, perfectly describes PGIS projects seeking landtenure and property rights (e.g., Neitschmann 1995;Poole 1995; Herlihy and Knapp 2003; Offen 2003). Incontrast, procedural change seeks to alter political pro-

cesses so that the interests of new groups are given in-creased legitimacy in decision making (Elwood 2002).PGIS projects that seek control over land use and re-source management seek this type of change, using mapsto convince the government that the indigenous com-munity is best suited to control decisions about the land(e.g., Poole 1995; Smith 2003). Finally, capacity build-ing is “generally framed as an expansion in the abilityof citizens or communities to take action on their ownbehalf” (Elwood 2002, 909). In essence, capacity build-ing makes it easier for an individual or group to achievedistributive or procedural change in the future. Thus,for example, the PGIS infrastructure that justified landrights might become a new data-storage capacity for acommunity, so that they retain a repository that de-scribes their traditions, their stories, and their ties tothe land.

PGIS projects can be quite effective at achievingthese types of empowerment for two primary reasons.First, the virtual format of geographic information tech-nology allows indigenous peoples to transmit theirvoices out of the forest to various hubs of governmentpower. Even now it is difficult for people like the Mai-juna to travel to the major urban centers of Peru. Oncetheir narratives are virtualized and visualized within a

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 8: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

814 Young and Gilmore

GIS, however, it becomes much easier for them to trans-mit those narratives anywhere throughout the world.Second, GIS encodes traditional knowledge within ascientific medium deemed legitimate by many politicalactors (Elwood 2002; Pickles 2003). Therefore, once theindigenous message reaches the public sphere, it is morelikely that it will lead to the political attention and dis-cussions that it deserves. The GIS can then serve as therational and scientific foundation for any resulting lawsor decisions. This vision of PGIS and empowerment,then, assumes a deliberative model of politics in whicha project will be injected into a rational debate whereunbiased actors will determine political outcomes basedon their fair deliberations over accurate representationsof the world (Habermas 1991). Within this frameworkthe only truly important outcome of the research is amap that maximizes the indigenous people’s chances ofachieving distributive or procedural change (or capac-ities to achieve such changes) within the deliberativesphere. By this logic of empowerment, the driving forcebehind the development of PGIS methods must be thecreation of a politically potent map.

Here we argue that this methodological mentalityplaces too much emphasis on the rational and delibera-tive aspects of the political system. By viewing the mapas simply an accurate reflection of the world that canbe injected into a rational political debate, geographerscontinue to “cling to the notion of a democracy of freethinkers freely thinking” (Thrift 2009, 92). Fortunately,some geographers are beginning to question the implicitconnection between pure rationality and GIS. Kwan,in particular, has argued that geospatial technologiescan be a space for both performing emotional work(2002, 2007) and representing emotions and narrativesattached to place (2008a, 2008b). She went on to ar-gue that “geospatial practices need to be embodied andattentive to the effects of emotions” (Kwan 2007, 23).She also recognized, however, that much of her previ-ous work has generally been performed on an individuallevel and that any effective “politics of resistance needsto be scaled up to the level of collectively practiced fem-inist politics” (Kwan 2007, 30). This article attemptsto build on Kwan’s observation at a community level.Throughout our PGIS project with the Maijuna, we no-ticed many affective and emotional moments that wentinto making the map but that were neither representedeffectively by the final map product nor adequately de-scribed by the current literature on empowerment. Webelieve that researchers need to better understand howthese performative moments affect the political poten-tial of PGIS as a research practice. First, however, it is

important to gain a better understanding of just whatwe mean by emotion and affect.

Theorizing Emotion and Affect

Contemporary conceptions of emotion differ dramat-ically from many of the earliest interpretations. In factthe very term emotion is a fairly recent one, with rootsin concepts such as passions, affections, and sentiments.Some of the earliest understandings placed the origina-tion of affect outside the body altogether, likening themto demons that found a temporary home within the bodyfrom time to time (Brennan 2004). Over time, classicalChristian theologians developed fairly complex theoriesrelating affect to the soul. They differentiated passionsand appetites, which were “movements of the loweranimal soul” responsible for hunger, thirst, and sexualdesire, from affections, which were tied to the higher ra-tional soul (Dixon 2008, 31). These affections includedlove, sympathy, and joy, and their presence was a signof “the order or direction of the will” and “relatednessto God” (Dixon 2008, 31). For St. Thomas Aquinas,in particular, the path to God was one in which theaffections and one’s intellect were united in an effortto overcome carnal passions and actualize one’s soul orwill within the world (Dixon 2008).

This description of affect was inherited by thebroader philosophical community, most notably in thework of Spinoza (Massumi 2002; Brennan 2004; Thrift2008b). Similar to theologians, Spinoza believed thataffects were a “manifestation of a striving to perseverein our being, which is our essence” (James 1997, 102).Unlike theologians, however, Spinoza ascribed to a neu-tral monism in which mind and body were composedof the same substance as both Nature and God. By thislogic the strivings of Nature and individuals can easilybleed into one another. Affect became “capacities to actand be acted upon” as determined by the body’s posi-tion in and relation to the world (Siegworth and Gregg2010, 1). Through affective relations with the world,“the power of acting of the body itself is increased, di-minished, helped, or hindered” (Spinoza 1883, 106).We feel positive affects when our power to act in theworld increases and negative affects when this powerdiminishes (Massumi 2002; Brennan 2004).

Beginning with the Scottish Enlightenment, manyphilosophers attempted to de-Christianize the mentalstates and provide a scientific alternative (Dixon 2008).Emotions thus became passive and noncognitive statesthat were experienced by the body and could be

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 9: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS 815

explained by the physical sciences. This shift in dis-course toward emotion provided a perfect foundationfor what came to be known as the James–Lange theory,which postulated that emotions were psychobiologicalphenomena triggered by the autonomic nervous systemor by subcortical brain processes (Scherer 2005; Dixon2008; Greco and Stenner 2008c). More recently,experimental psychologists have mapped these brainprocesses to reveal emotions as bodily response systemscomposed of many different components. In thisscenario emotions are packages of many differentbodily functions that produce a coherent response tosome stimuli. These interpretations of emotion arehighly territorialized by the psychobiological sciences,though, and social scientists have now begun to offeralternate understandings of emotion.

Critical to this social turn was the two-factor the-ory, which argued that emotions are composed of abiological arousal factor and a cognition factor thatinterpreted the arousal (Greco and Stenner 2008c).Proponents of this theory posited that the biologicalfactor played a “minor role of supplying undifferenti-ated arousal,” whereas “the cognitive system had themore subtle job of lending specific emotional mean-ing to this arousal” (Greco and Stenner 2008c, 8). Bydividing the cognitive from the biological, these socialscientists were able to argue that emotions are a “discur-sive, dialogical phenomena, structured by the historicaland cultural contingencies of communicational inter-actions” (Greco and Stenner 2008c, 9). Within geog-raphy, the distinction between biological and cognitivefactors remains contentious, and much of the activecritical debate focuses on delineations between the bi-ological concept of affect and the socially oriented no-tion of emotion (Thien 2005; McCormack 2006, 2007;Greco and Stenner 2008b; Smith et al. 2009).

Thrift (2008a, 2008b, 2009) is perhaps the geogra-pher most strongly associated with affect, and he at-tempted to define the term using a cluster of concepts.First, affect is a biological and embodied process that canbe difficult to represent socioliguistically (Thrift 2009).Here Thrift’s interpretation is reminiscent of earlierpsychobiological work, but he also drew on more con-temporary biological work to prove that emotions aredriven by deeper bodily functions, felt presociolinguis-tically as affect (Massumi 2002). For example, Thrift(2008b) drew inspiration from Tomkins’s affect theory,which holds that a biological affect system has devel-oped alongside the four other basic systems of humanfunctioning (Demos 1995). This affect system presentsa direct connection between an organism and the envi-

ronment because it allows any stimuli in the environ-ment to directly trigger changes in the density of neuralfirings in the brain of the organism. These changes indensity are felt as affects (Demos 1995). Tomkins basedthis affect system in the face, which he saw as the portalbetween organisms and their environment.

Tomkins (1995) also argued that the face could trans-mit affect to others. This brings us to Thrift’s (2009)second contention—that affect is a set of flows thatmoves through bodies via processes of mimesis and en-trainment. Tomkins (1995), for example, argued thatseeing another person smile makes it more likely thatthe viewer would also want to smile. Because the actof smiling itself is responsible for making an individ-ual feel joy, the affect itself, and not just the smile, isactually transmitted from person to person (Tomkins1995). Thrift (2008a) found confirmation in this epi-demiological model of affect from philosopher de Tarde(1899), who argued that most human action is basedon unconscious imitation. Whereas Tomkins and deTarde relied heavily on the role of sight in producingmimesis, Brennan (2004) argued that pheromones playa critical role in affective entrainment. Although Bren-nan did recognize that pheromonal signals can be inter-preted in different ways based on a person’s history, shebelieved that these pheromones give spaces affectiveatmospheres that produce a tendency for those in thespace to “converge emotionally” (Hatfield, Cacioppo,and Rapson 1994, 5).

Thrift (2008a, 2008b, 2009) went a bit further thansimply claiming that affect can move from body to body;by drawing on Deleuze’s writings on Spinoza (Deleuzeand Guattari 1987; Deleuze 1988), Thrift drew affectoutside of the subject altogether. Deleuze (1988, 125)was interested in “laying out a common plane of im-manence on which all bodies, all minds, and all indi-viduals are situated.” For Spinoza (1883) this commonplane, or Nature, was constantly moving deterministi-cally toward its being following God’s rules. AlthoughDeleuze was willing to “take the step of dispensing withGod” (Massumi 2002, 36), he continued to describeaffect in terms of the intensity of a body’s attunementwith the movement and self-organization of the worldaround it. Implicit in affect, then, is the interplay be-tween the unactualized potential of all bodies and thefunctional limitations placed on this potential by theactual; in other words, the emergence of the actualfrom the virtual (Massumi 2002). Returning to Thrift(2009, 88), this conceptualization culminates in affectas a “set of flows moving through the bodies of hu-man and other beings” to produce certain effects on

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 10: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

816 Young and Gilmore

those bodies. This points to why affect is so politicallyimportant—it is what causes us to act, to bond withothers, to laugh together, and more; it is the “preper-sonal intensity corresponding to the passage from oneexperiential state to another and implying an augmen-tation or diminution of the body’s capacity to act”(Massumi 1987, xvii).

Thrift associated the intensities and flows of af-fect with the political and social, but many geogra-phers studying emotion criticize his approach for beingmasculinist and dismissive of power geometries (Thien2005; Tolia-Kelly 2006). As Thien (2005) pointed out,Thrift and other proponents of affect theory tend toavoid cuddly descriptions of emotion. Instead, they relyon intellectually dense philosophies that “re-draw yetagain not only the demarcation between masculinistreason and feminized emotion, but also the false distinc-tion between ‘personal’ and ‘political’ which feministscholars have extensively critiqued” (Thien 2005, 452).Tolia-Kelly (2006) went further to argue that Thrift’stranshumanist theories ignore the ways in which dif-ferent bodies have different capacities for being af-fected due to “their racialized, gendered, and sexualizedmarkedness” (215). Because affects are always expressedas emotions within social situations, they are always me-diated by social processes that are rife with inequalitiesand uneven power geometries.

Given these criticisms of theories of affect, it is notsurprising that many geographers of emotion adopt aconstructionist view in their analysis. These approachesview emotions as social products that are “constructedin and by social contexts” (Gobert 2009, 72). Althoughemotions are embodied and biologically based, it is“impossible to separate physiological factors from thelinguistic tools we use to understand these factors”(Gobert 2009, 72–73). Therefore, Tolia-Kelly (2006)argued that geographers need to unpack emotions tobetter understand how they are produced by and withinbodies that have specific social contexts. Within manysuch works authors stress the relationality of experi-ences and identity, the power of feminist theory, andthe importance of narrative to unlocking emotional per-spectives (Thien 2005).

This represents a wide range of theoretical positionsfrom which to understand affect and emotion, and eachposition along this range comes with its own complexi-ties, strengths, and weaknesses. Many others, however,recognize that emotion and affect necessarily resist rig-orous theoretical conceptualization, and these writershave embraced the blurred and provisional meaningsof the terms they deploy (e.g., Lipman 2006; Greco

and Stenner 2008a; Smith et al. 2009). Because thisarticle is merely attempting to initiate discussion aboutany less-than-representational effects of PGIS method-ologies, we believe the best approach here is to takeas broad of an interpretation of affect and emotion aspossible to serve merely as a beginning point for futurework. Therefore, within this article we take a two-factorapproach of our own but one that values the biologicaland the social equally. Our approach makes the follow-ing assumptions:

1. We acknowledge that affect and emotion areblurred and closely related concepts and some-times refer to them together as affect/emotion.This allows us to recognize the need to discussthem in a unitary fashion.

2. Affect/emotion is very complex, having biologi-cal causes and effects as well as social causes andeffects. We refer to psychobiological manifesta-tions of affect/emotion as affect and social mani-festations as emotion.

3. Because it is psychobiological, affect manifests it-self through many different bodily functions, fromsubcortical brain processes to facial expressions.These bodily functions are felt, sometimes in man-ners that can be sociolinguistically represented asemotions and sometimes in more nonrepresenta-tional manners (Thrift 2008a, 2008b). Regardless,affect always changes a body’s capacity to act inthe world and is often felt as a sense of vitality(Massumi 1987). In this manner, affect can behighly political.

4. Although we recognize the potential power oftranshumanist philosophies, we prefer to avoidtoo dense of a theoretical position. After all, manyof the moments of affect/emotion that inspiredthis article manifested themselves through thesharing of personal narratives and therefore tookthe form of socialized emotions. Affects can, andoften are, expressed sociolinguistically as emo-tions. Therefore, they should be analyzed with aneye toward the social context and positioning ofthe body that expressed them. In this sense, emo-tions are everyday, embodied feelings mediated bymany social factors.

5. Affect/emotion is contagious and spreads througha number of complex physiological (affective) andsocial (emotional) interactions. These interac-tions could include mimesis (de Tarde 1899), en-trainment (Brennan 2004), emotional discourseand emotives (Lutz 2008), and more. Affect/

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 11: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS 817

emotion also tends to be sticky, meaning that pastaffective/emotional experiences can remain withand influence a body in future situations (Ahmed2010).

In summary, affect/emotion is sometimes felt in non-representational and biological ways and sometimes as-sociated with and represented by socialized emotions.It can be triggered by a number of biological and socialprocesses, tends to spread throughout groups, and canhave long-lasting effects. Finally, it is deeply politicalin its propensity to drive action (or inaction) and in itscomplicity with long-standing power geometries. Withthis general interpretation in mind, we now return toour PGIS work with the Maijuna.

Affective/Emotional Eruptions

In this section we argue that methodological choicesmade during PGIS projects can produce important af-fective/emotional geographies among participants. Oneof the earliest methodological choices that we made,particularly when traveling with our Sucusari team, wasto personally visit each of the houses in the commu-nities to spread word of the project among potentialparticipants. We relied heavily on our Sucusari teamto introduce us to the community members, so that itwas easier to build at least a base level of trust withthem. Because our Sucusari team members were oftenfamiliar with the new participants, they often met oneanother with embraces, jokes, and laughter. From theperspective of Tomkins’s (1995) affect theory, theseintroductory meetings spread positive affect throughsmiles and even laughter. Similarly, the Sucusari teammembers might have given off other signs of their ex-citement, from a familiar embrace to Brennan’s (2004)affective pheromones. These highly affective encoun-ters opened the new participants up to the idea of par-ticipating in the project and embracing the authors asnew friends. During these first meetings, the owners ofeach household would often take on the role of hosts,offering our team food and drink and sharing personalstories about their respective community. Our Sucusariteam members would then begin to articulate some oftheir feelings of excitement for beginning work in thenew community. This discourse connected the idea ofthe mapping process, which was often quite foreignto new participants, to emotions like excitement andpride. These emotional statements can be understoodas emotives, or words that “perform feelings” (Greco andStenner 2008a, 61). By sharing in the performance

of these emotives, the new participants began to feelmore excitement themselves. Thus, the new partici-pants would often echo the excitement expressed bythe Sucusari team, in addition to expressing hope thatthey could achieve the same mapping successes that theSucusari community had already achieved.

These methodological choices angled the new partic-ipants toward the project based on the affects/emotionselicited during preliminary conversations (Ahmed2010). Thus, at each communal meeting, many of theMaijuna with whom we had met were eager to learnmore about the project. We felt that the use of theminga as a space for the mapping sessions was importantfor maintaining this comfort and excitement. Becausethe minga is a social forum that the Maijuna regularlyuse to engender participation in large projects, our useof it showed that we respected Maijuna social practicesand norms. It also allowed us to reciprocate the hos-pitality that the Maijuna had already shown us. Thus,our culturally informed methodological choice in usingthe minga format provided a perfect space for the cre-ation of an affective/emotional atmosphere that couldsupercharge the exchange of both affective (visual andpheromonal) signals and emotional discourse.

When asked to begin mapping their traditional lands,the participants were forced to negotiate with a num-ber of competing discourses and social processes. Al-though much of the discourse surrounding the projectitself was couched in terms of excitement and po-litical potential, the participants were also painfullyaware of the history of colonialism that had erasedthem from official Peruvian maps and obscured much oftheir traditional knowledge. These emotions were thencompounded by contemporary processes including log-ging, poaching, and proposed development. In contrast,the process of mapping allowed the Maijuna to producea new imaginary for their world, one in which ownershiprights provided them the opportunity to preserve tradi-tional knowledge and the natural resources on whichthey rely.

Participation in this reterritorialization of the worldbecame a point of pride for many of the participants.For example, they often took pride in the amount thatthey knew about their people’s history, and their partic-ipation was rewarded as other participants treated themand their knowledge with respect. For many of the par-ticipants the process also became more than the actof simply recording a history—it also became a perfor-mance of ownership, community, and heritage; a state-ment that the Maijuna lived in the forest; and a demandto be recognized by the Peruvian government. The

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 12: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

818 Young and Gilmore

traditional names for rivers or historical sites becameproof that the Maijuna had a right to the land. Inother rare instances, participants no longer knew thehistorical name of a site due to the erosion of tra-ditional knowledge. A strong connection to that siteoften remained, however, either because a Maijunafamily farmed or hunted near it or because of other re-cent experiences in the area, and the participants wouldrename the site (in both Spanish and Maijuna) basedon that connection. Thus, the participants were ableto use these opportunities to reassert their ties to theland within the lexicon of the map. This performanceof naming as power rewarded participants by officiallytying their spatial activities to the land.

Here, we should note that active participation inthe mapping sessions did vary along gender and genera-tional lines, and these divisions undoubtedly had an im-pact on the ways in which the project affected differentparticipants. After all, if certain individuals felt less ableto participate in the naming of traditional sites, thenthey likely felt the affective/emotional effects of thatprocess differently. When inviting participants to themapping sessions we were careful to welcome all mem-bers of each household to participate, and we found thatentire families often did attend the sessions, althoughmen did tend to actively participate in the project themost. Naturally, this was not always the case; womenwith higher status in the communities would partici-pate as much or more than some of the men in theirrespective communities. We were cognizant of thesegendered dimensions to participation throughout theproject, as well as the difficulty of balancing respect forMaijuna traditions (including traditional gender roles)with our desire to empower all participants equally. Inthe end, given this balancing act and our own positionas two male researchers, we chose to simply do our bestto create a safe space in which all individuals, regardlessof gender or age, felt that they could participate equally.

Nevertheless, it is likely that the adult male par-ticipants felt the effects of the produced affective/emotional geographies in different ways than other par-ticipants. For example, when not actively participatingin the creation of the maps, adult female participantsoften used the sessions to sit with their children, helpingthem to understand the mapping process and to appre-ciate the traditional knowledge being discussed. Theseroles, as both teacher and mother, have their own af-fective/emotional dimensions and deserve far greaterattention (Watkins 2010). Therefore, we do not be-lieve that the gendered and generational dimensions ofour study undermine our broader argument that PGIS

practitioners should pay closer attention to the con-nection between methodology and affective/emotionalgeographies. Instead, we believe that this project pointsto the need for future research that further analyzes theaffective/emotional microgeographies that produce dif-ferent effects in different participants (Thien 2005).This will allow geographers to better understand theways in which PGIS projects empower (or disempower)different participants to different degrees based on theirown methodological choices.

In addition to the performance of mapping, ourmethodology also allowed space for participation intomore artistic realms. When participants were asked tochoose symbols to represent different significant siteson the map, they took it upon themselves to brainstormand create the best symbols. Individuals and teams wereencouraged to compete against one another to see whocould come up with the best idea, and they were re-warded for both their creativity and their artistic ability.This same level of creativity was also applied through-out PGIS activities; the Maijuna began taking greatpride in setting up photographic and video opportuni-ties. Without any prompting from either of the authors,the field team would often set out to find the perfectspot from which to take a photograph of a site, and theywould even cut down branches or trim high grass to op-timize the scene. For example, when Nueva Vida par-ticipants arrived at an old cemetery site, they trimmedgrass and removed branches from around the graves toshow respect for the deceased. They also began script-ing the video interviews by writing out small speechesand choosing good spots to take the video. They be-came very proud of how their videos represented theirpeople’s history with the land.

Although this pride in oneself and one’s historyis important in itself, it is also highly political. AsGoffman (2008) explained, social encounters allowindividuals to receive confirmation from others thatthey are acting in socially appropriate ways. Individu-als feel rewarded when they receive this confirmation(Hochschild 2008). In the case of the Maijuna partic-ipants, our methodological choices facilitated the per-formance of different modes of ownership, pride, andidentity. They then received confirmation, from boththe authors and other Maijuna participants, that thiswas an appropriate way to perform. In fact, by encodingtheir performance in an authoritative technology thatcould be shared with government actors, it was sym-bolically proclaimed that their performances were valu-able to actors far outside of the mapping process itself.This valuation flies in the face of hundreds of years of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 13: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS 819

governmental practices that deemed any performanceof indigeneity as inappropriate (Yashar 2005). In thiscase, the authoritative and communicative nature ofthe technology, the presence of the authors as experts,and the power of group recognition all served to trans-form the map into a political affirmation of a Maijunaright to reterritorialize land based on historical ties andtraditional knowledge. Therefore, the newly createdmap became far more than a representation of knowl-edge; it was also a “cluster of promises” that the Maijunashould and could act politically (Berlant 2010).

Importantly, these promises can have enduring ef-fects. To prove this we turn to Collins (2008), who hasexamined the relationship of emotions to long-termsocial cohesion. He argued that conversations act asrituals that determine who gets to be a member of asocial group. According to Collins (2008, 135), it is“not important whether what is said is true or not, butthat it can be said and accepted as a common realityfor that moment, that makes it an emblem of groupmembership.” In the context of PGIS work, this meansthat whether or not the project produces an accuraterepresentation of the world, it can still produce socialcohesion if all the participants feel the same way aboutthat representation. The two key factors for producingsocial cohesion are common conversational resourcesand a common emotional tone (Collins 2008). Thusfar we have looked primarily at how the PGIS processproduces common emotional tones among participants,but it also produces new (or reproduces old) conversa-tional resources that the emotional tone can continueto feed off of into the future.

Many of the participants initially became interestedin the project because they were curious about whatthey had heard about the mapping process or fieldwork.Others were interested in learning more about the his-tory of their own ancestral lands because, in many cases,traditional knowledge about different places was declin-ing and degrading over time. Many of the children andteenagers of the communities would crowd around theirparents as they worked on the participatory map, andthey would listen with great interest as the adults dis-cussed the histories of different sites. Even the adultswould learn from one another during the project, andparticularly from elders of the community. At times,none of the participants knew or could remember thehistory of a particular location, but their desire to learnled them to go out into the community and seek oth-ers with the necessary knowledge. This knowledge ex-change was not restricted to a single community, either;many times Maijuna individuals from other communi-

ties would come to listen to the mapping sessions tak-ing place in other communities. This process alloweda transfer of knowledge between communities of differ-ent river basins, ultimately providing individuals witha more complete and comprehensive picture of Mai-juna traditional knowledge. Additionally, this learningprocess extended past the mapping sessions and intothe field for PGIS data collection. As the teams trav-eled to different historical sites, team members wouldrecount detailed histories of the land through whichwe were traveling. Many of these narrative momentswere recorded on video and then shared again when theteam returned to the community. PGIS team membersalso often learned to use cameras and GPS units, so thatthey could take more ownership of the PGIS process.They often became fiercely proud when they returnedto the community, were able to share the pictures thatthey had taken, and then tell stories about both thesite and our visit to it. In the long run we hope thatthe maps, and eventually some form of GIS databasethat includes these multimedia data, will preservethese conversational topics for generations to come.In this way they could continue to contribute to somesense of Maijuna community and to elicit some of theaffective/emotional responses to the PGIS project.

Much of this discussion has been grounded in the-ories of emotion, but affective elements should not bediscounted; the mapping process often also produced anaffective atmosphere that escaped emotional represen-tation. Returning to Massumi (2002), we would arguethat the mapping process in general produced a sense ofvitality within the participants, opened them up to po-tential in the world, and augmented their capacity to acton this potential. Many times during the mapping andPGIS process, the Maijuna would lapse into discussionsof uses for the map, including its use as a claim to theirland, as a teaching vehicle for their children, as a tool tocontrol logging in the area, or even as a tool to spur sus-tainable job opportunities like ecotourism. These wereimportant bonding moments for the Maijuna and alsomoments that stressed the importance of the project.At times notions of political responsibility would alsohelp participants overcome disappointments. For ex-ample, at one point during one of the community map-ping sessions, participation was low and those presentcommented that it was disappointing that more mem-bers were not present. Another participant responded,“Such is life, we must remember this is for our chil-dren, our grandchildren.” They then continued on toask us about the future functionality of the final GIS andwhat its implications might mean for their children. At

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 14: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

820 Young and Gilmore

another point a rumor circulated that the regional gov-ernment had already accepted the proposal to establisha regional conservation area in Maijuna ancestral lands.Although this acceptance might have made the originalpolitical purposes for the maps moot, the participantsdid not find the project any less relevant. When weasked one participant whether or not the map was stillimportant, he replied,

Yes. Nothing is certain yet. We don’t know what thecompany [that wants to build a road through our land] isgoing to do, and we don’t know what the people want todo with the map.

He believed that the map was the key to finding outhow the Maijuna people want to manage the land if aregional conservation area is established. This showedhow participants in the project were able to see pastthe original goals of the project, took ownership of theprocess, and could imagine that process leading to out-comes other than those prescribed by us.

Conclusion

With this article we attempted to show how theMaijuna PGIS project produced many important re-sults that remained outside of the representational spaceof the final map product. Regardless of whether oneclassifies these results as emotional or affective, theyare results that directly benefited those involved in theproject. They are also a result of some of the method-ological choices that we, as researchers, made and theways in which we positioned the project within thecommunities. Had we stressed audio instead of video,downplayed creativity or artistry during the mappingprocess, not utilized the minga as a forum for the map-ping, or not taught the Maijuna to use GPS and cameras,then the project might not have achieved these same re-sults, even if it did still produce an effective map. There-fore, we would argue that these affective/emotionalresults are something researchers need to think moreabout when designing their PGIS methodologies. Mapsare powerful, not only because of what they representbut also because the process of mapping forces commu-nities to come together and think about how they sharethe spaces in which they live. These results are not onlyintrinsically important, but they also make the commu-nity more likely to be excited about using their mappedproduct, adding political value to the map itself.

We primarily made methodological choices to pro-duce positive political outcomes for the Maijuna, butresearchers can also make them to prevent or mitigate

negative results for the research and participants. Afterall, emotions including anger, jealousy, and resentmentcan devastate communities and political movements.When dealing with data and methodologies that can sopowerfully affect a community’s well-being, researchersmust tread carefully to avoid negative consequences; therecent controversy over the first Bowman Expeditionclearly demonstrates these dangers (Steinberg 2010).During this expedition, in which Herlihy (2010) usedparticipatory mapping to study Mexican land policy, alocal indigenous activist accused the researcher of hid-ing a military funding source (Agnew 2010; Bryan 2010;Cruz 2010; Steinberg 2010). Regardless of whether Her-lihy actually violated human subjects ethics, there isno doubt that metalevel research decisions—fundingsources, prior informed consent, and data accessibilityand dissemination—have produced a great deal of alarmand confusion for the communities involved (Herlihy2010). Thus, even if the researchers did fulfill ethi-cal requirements at the beginning of the project, theystill could have made certain methodological choices(lengthier discussions about funding and data dissemi-nation rights, etc.) to further benefit the affective andemotional well-being of the communities. Although itcan be difficult for researchers to predict how partici-pants will react to, (re)interpret, or politicize differentaspects of a research project, a better understanding ofthe emotional and affective dimensions of participatoryresearch can only help researchers to be more preparedfor these unforeseen consequences. It might also helpto reinforce the importance of treating ethics as an im-portant, difficult, and dynamic process that researchersmust constantly negotiate with participants.

Naturally, we do not want to detract from thepower of the actual map produced by the Maijunaor reinforce a boundary between representational andnonrepresentational thinking (Del Casino and Hanna2006; Sparke 2011). We hope that the map that theMaijuna created will bring them powerful political re-sults, as a representation of their long-standing connec-tion to the land around them, but that is only half ofthe picture. In fact, we hope that the map itself can pro-duce certain affective/emotional geographies beyondthe stage of production, particularly with the inclusionof qualitative data like videos and photographs. Ideally,the video narratives included in the map will affectpolicymakers on a visceral level and not simply intel-lectually (Aitken and Craine 2009). That is, of course,one of the main reasons for going to the trouble of in-cluding video in the GIS; text would, after all, impartthe same information to the user. In the end, however,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 15: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS 821

it would leave out a great deal of the qualitative andemotional experience.

By way of conclusion we would like to leave thereader with a few final thoughts about how affective/emotional geographies could engage productivelywith two current strands of critical GIS thought:neogeography and qualitative GIS. By neogeographywe are referring to a trend in which citizens, orneogeographers, with little background in cartographyor geospatial technologies, are taking advantage ofWeb 2.0 technologies to produce their own maps ormash-ups (Sparke 2011). These neogeographers eachwork with their own computer or mobile device tocontribute partial truths that are made more accurateby a larger crowd. We believe that a closer look at manyof these neogeographic projects from an affective/emotional perspective might problematize thisdiscourse of crowdsourcing. Individuals, just like com-munities, can be affected by a whole range of choicesmade in the construction of neogeographic products.As the division between map producer and consumercontinues to become blurrier, we imagine that theemotional geographies produced by maps will becomeever messier and more powerful (Del Casino andHanna 2006). Geographers must remain aware of theseeffects as they engage in their own activist research.

Finally, the qualitative GIS movement is attemptingto capitalize on many of the multimedia experienceswe described here, and many qualitative geographershave begun to ask what a qualitative GIS might looklike (e.g., Elwood 2009). With this article we argue thatthis is the perfect opportunity to stress the qualitativeexperiences that go into creating a map and not justthe qualitative data inside the map. It is time to startinvestigating how a qualitative GIS might not be solelyabout the map produced and displayed on the computerscreen. Perhaps it is also the many qualitative experi-ences and affective geographies that go into, and comefrom, producing that map.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Maijuna people and theFederacion de Comunidades Nativas Maijuna (FECONA-MAI) for their interest and collaboration in this project.Financial support for this project was generously pro-vided by George Mason University, The Rufford SmallGrants Foundation, the Applied Plant Ecology Programof the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Re-search, the National Science Foundation, the Elizabeth

Wakeman Henderson Charitable Foundation, PhippsConservatory and Botanical Gardens (Botany in Ac-tion), The Explorers Club, and the Willard ShermanTurrell Herbarium, Department of Botany, Departmentof Geography, and Stevenson Fund of Miami Univer-sity. Support for this project was also provided by aMathy Junior Faculty Award, College of Humanitiesand Social Sciences, George Mason University. We alsoappreciate feedback from Sarah Elwood, Matt Sparke,Matt Wilson, Mei-Po Kwan, and two anonymous re-viewers, which helped to improve this article.

ReferencesAgnew, J. 2010. Ethics or militarism? The role of the AAG

in what was originally a dispute over informed consent.Political Geography 29 (8): 422–23.

Ahmed, S. 2010. Happy objects. In The affect theory reader,ed. M. Gregg and G. J. Seigworth, 29–51. Durham, NC:Duke University Press.

Aitken, S., and J. Craine. 2009. Into the image and beyond:Affective visual geographies and GIScience. In Qualita-tive GIS: A mixed methods approach, ed. M. Cope and S.Elwood, 139–55. London: Sage.

Bellier, I. 1993. Mai huna Tomo I. Los pueblos indios en susmitos No. 7 [Mai huna Volume I. Indigenous people intheir myths Number 7]. Quito, Ecuador: Abya-Yala.

———. 1994. Los Mai huna [The Mai huna]. In GuıaEtnografica de la Alta Amazonıa, ed. F. Santos and F.Barclay, 1–180. Quito, Ecuador: FLACSO-SEDE.

Berlant, L. 2010. Cruel optimism. In The affect theory reader,ed. M. Gregg and G. J. Seigworth, 93–117. Durham, NC:Duke University Press.

Brack-Egg, A. 1998. Amazonia: Biodiversidad, Comunidades,y Desarrollo [The Amazon: Biodiversity, communities,and development]. CD-ROM. Lima, Peru: DESYCOM(GEF, PNUD, UNOPS, Proyectos RLA/92/G31, 32, 33,and FIDA).

Brennan, T. 2004. The transmission of affect. Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press.

Bryan, J. 2010. Force multipliers: Geography, militarism, andthe Bowman Expeditions. Political Geography 29 (8):414–16.

Caquard, S., S. Pyne, H. Igloliorte, K. Mierins, A. Hayes,and D. R. F. Taylor. 2009. A “living” atlas for geospatialstorytelling: The cybercartographic atlas of indigenousperspectives and knowledge of the Great Lakes region.Cartographica 44 (2): 83–100.

Collins, R. 2008. The role of emotion in social structure. InEmotions: A social science reader, ed. M. Greco and P.Stenner, 132–36. London and New York: Routledge.

Corbett, J., and P. Keller. 2006. An analytical frameworkto examine empowerment associated with participatorygeographic information systems (PGIS). Cartographica40 (4): 91–102.

Corbett, J., and G. Rambaldi. 2009. Geographic informationtechnologies, local knowledge, and change. In Qualita-tive GIS, ed. M. Cope and S. Elwood, 75–92. London:Sage.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 16: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

822 Young and Gilmore

Crampton, J. 2009. Cartography: Performative, participatory,political. Progress in Human Geography 33 (6): 840–48.

Cruz, M. K. 2010. A living space: The relationship betweenland and property in the community. Political Geography29 (8): 420–21.

Del Casino, V. J., and S. P. Hanna. 2006. Beyond the “bina-ries”: A methodological intervention for interrogatingmaps as representational practices. ACME: An Inter-national E-Journal for Critical Geographies 4 (1): 34–56.http://www.acme-journal.org/vol14/VDCSPH.pdf (lastaccessed 24 July 2012).

Deleuze, G. 1988. Spinoza: Practical philosophy. San Francisco:City Lights Books.

Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1987. A thousand plateaus:Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press.

Demos, E. V. 1995. An affect revolution: Silvan Tomkins’saffect theory. In Exploring affect, ed. E. V. Demos, 17–26.Cambridge, UK: Press Syndicate of the University ofCambridge.

de Tarde, G. 1899. Social laws: An outline of sociology. London:Macmillan.

Dixon, T. 2008. From passions to emotions. In Emotions: Asocial science reader, ed. M. Greco and P. Stenner, 29–33.London and New York: Routledge.

Duncan, S. L. 2006. Mapping whose reality? Geographic in-formation systems (GIS) and “wild science.” Public Un-derstanding of Science 15 (4): 411–34.

Dunn, C. E. 2007. Participatory GIS—A people’s GIS?Progress in Human Geography 31 (5): 616–37.

Elwood, S. 2002. GIS use in community planning: A multi-dimensional analysis of empowerment. Environment andPlanning A 34 (5): 905–22.

———. 2009. Multiple representations, significations, andepistemologies in community-based GIS. In QualitativeGIS, ed. M. Cope and S. Elwood, 57–74. London: Sage.

Elwood, S., and M. Cope. 2009. Introduction: QualitativeGIS: Forging mixed methods through representations,analytical innovations, and conceptual engagements.In Qualitative GIS, ed. M. Cope and S. Elwood, 1–12.London: Sage.

Gilmore, M. P. 2005. An ethnoecological and ethnobotani-cal study of the Maijuna Indians of the Peruvian Amazon.PhD dissertation, Department of Botany, Miami Univer-sity, Miami, FL.

———. 2010. The Maijuna: Past, present, and future. InPeru: Maijuna, Rapid biological and social inventories Report22, ed. M. P. Gilmore, C. Vriesendorp, W. S. Alverson,A. del Campo, R. von May, C. Lopez Wong, and S. RıosOchoa, 226–33. Chicago: The Field Museum.

Gilmore, M. P., W. H. Eshbaugh, and A. M. Greenberg.2002. The use, construction, and importance of canoesamong the Maijuna of the Peruvian Amazon. EconomicBotany 56 (1): 10–26.

Gilmore, M. P., C. Vriesendorp, W. S. Alverson, A. delCampo, R. von May, C. Lopez Wong, and S. Rıos Ochoa,ed. 2010. Peru: Maijuna, Rapid biological and social inven-tories Report 22. Chicago: The Field Museum.

Gilmore, M. P., and J. C. Young. 2010. The Maijuna par-ticipatory mapping project: Mapping the past and thepresent for the future. In Peru: Maijuna, Rapid biologi-cal and social inventories Report 22, ed. M. P. Gilmore,

C. Vriesendorp, W. S. Alverson, A. del Campo, R.von May, C. Lopez Wong, and S. Rıos Ochoa, 233–42.Chicago: The Field Museum.

Gobert, R. D. 2009. Historicizing emotion: The case ofFreudian hysteria and Aristotelian “purgation.” In Emo-tion, place and culture, ed. M. Smith, J. Davidson, L.Cameron, and L. Bondi, 57–78. Surrey, UK: Ashgate.

Goffman, E. 2008. Embarrassment and social organization.In Emotions: A social science reader, ed. M. Greco and P.Stenner, 112–15. London and New York: Routledge.

Greco, M., and P. Stenner. 2008a. Emotions and culture. InEmotions: A social science reader, ed. M. Greco and P.Stenner, 59–62. London: Routledge.

———. 2008b. Emotions, space, and place. In Emotions: Asocial science reader, ed. M. Greco and P. Stenner, 181–83.London and New York: Routledge.

———. 2008c. Introduction: Emotion and social science. InEmotions: A social science reader, ed. M. Greco and P.Stenner, 1–22. London and New York: Routledge.

Habermas, J. 1991. The structural transformation of the publicsphere. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Hatfield, C., J. T. Cacioppo, and R. L. Rapson. 1994. Emo-tional contagion: Studies in emotion and social interaction.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Herlihy, P. H. 2010. Self-appointed gatekeepers attack theAmerican Geographical Society’s first Bowman Expedi-tion. Political Geography 29 (8): 417–19.

Herlihy, P. H., and G. Knapp. 2003. Maps of, by, and for thepeoples of Latin America. Human Organization: Jour-nal for the Society of Applied Anthropology 62 (4): 303–14.

Hochschild, A. R. 2008. Emotion work, feeling rules andsocial structure. In Emotions: A social science reader, ed.M. Greco and P. Stenner, 121–26. London and NewYork: Routledge.

James, S. 1997. Passion and action: The emotions in seventeenth-century philosophy. Oxford, UK: Clarendon.

Kwan, M.-P. 2002. Feminist visualization: Re-envisioningGIS as a method in feminist geographic research. Annalsof the Association of American Geographers 92 (4): 645–61.

———. 2007. Affecting geospatial technologies: Toward afeminist politics of emotion. The Professional Geographer59 (1): 22–34.

———. 2008a. From oral histories to visual narratives: Re-presenting the post-September 11 experiences of theMuslim women in the USA. Social and Cultural Geog-raphy 9 (6): 653–69.

———. 2008b. Geo-narrative: Extending geographic infor-mation systems for narrative analysis in qualitative andmixed-method research. The Professional Geographer 60(4): 443–65.

Kwan, M.-P., and L. Knigge. 2006. Doing qualitative researchusing GIS: An oxymoronic endeavor? Environment andPlanning A 38 (11): 1999–2002.

Kyem, P. 2002. Promoting local community participationin forest management through a PPGIS application insouthern Ghana. In Community participation and geo-graphic information systems, ed. J. W. Craig, T. M. Harris,and D. Weiner, 218–31. London and New York: Taylor& Francis.

Lipman, C. 2006. Review essay: The emotional self. CulturalGeographies 13 (4): 617–24.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 17: The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS 823

Lutz, C. 2008. Engendered emotion. In Emotions: A social sci-ence reader, ed. M. Greco and P. Stenner, 63–71. Londonand New York: Routledge.

Massumi, B. 1987. Notes on the translation and acknowl-edgements. In A thousand plateaus, G. Deleuze and F.Guattari, xvi–xix. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress.

———. 2002. Parables for the virtual. Durham, NC: DukeUniversity Press.

McCormack, D. 2006. For the love of pipes and cables: Aresponse to Deborah Thien. Area 38 (3): 330–32.

———. 2007. Molecular affects in human geographies. En-vironment and Planning A 39 (2): 359–77.

Neitschmann, B. 1995. Defending the Miskito reefs withmaps and GPS. Cultural Survival Quarterly 18 (4): 34–37.

Offen, K. H. 2003. Narrating place and identity, or mappingMiskitu land claims in northeastern Nicaragua. HumanOrganization: Journal for the Society of Applied Anthropol-ogy 62 (4): 382–92.

Pickles, J. 2003. A history of spaces: Cartographic reason, map-ping and the geo-coded world. London and New York:Routledge.

Poole, P. 1995. Land-based communities, geomatics, and bio-diversity conservation. Cultural Survival Quarterly 18 (4):74–76.

Ramasubramanian, L. 1998. From access to power: Participa-tory planning and decision making in community-basedorganizations using information technologies. RegionalPolicy and Practice 7 (1): 25–31.

Scherer, K. R. 2005. What are emotions? And how canthey be measured? Social Science Information 44 (4):693–727.

Sieber, R. 2006. Public participation geographic informa-tion systems: A literature review and framework. Annalsof the Association of American Geographers 96 (3): 491–507.

Siegworth, G. J., and M. Gregg. 2010. An inventory of shim-mers. In The affect theory reader, ed. M. Gregg and G. J.Seigworth, 1–28. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Smith, D. A. 2003. Participatory mapping of communitylands and hunting yields among the bugle of WesternPanama. Human Organization: Journal for the Society ofApplied Anthropology 62 (4): 332–43.

Smith, M., J. Davidson, L. Cameron, and L. Bondi. 2009.Geography and emotion—Emerging constellations. InEmotion, place and culture, ed. M. Smith, J. Davidson, L.

Cameron, and L. Bondi, 1–20. Surrey, England: AshgatePublishing Ltd.

Sparke, M. 2011. The look of surveillance returns. In Clas-sics in cartography: Reflections on influential articles fromCartographica, ed. M. Dodge, 373–86. Chichester, UK:Wiley.

Spinoza, B. 1883. Ethic. Trans. W. H. White. London:Trubner & Co., Ludgate Hill.

Steinberg, P. E. 2010. Professional ethics and the politics ofgeographic knowledge: The Bowman Expeditions. Polit-ical Geography 29 (8): 413.

Steward, J. H. 1946. Western Tucanoan tribes. In Handbookof South American Indians. Vol. 3, ed. J. H. Steward,737–48. Washington, DC: U.S. Government PrintingOffice.

Thien, D. 2005. After or beyond feeling? A consideration ofaffect and emotion in geography. Area 37 (4): 450–56.

Thrift, N. 2008a. Intensities of feeling. In Emotions: A socialscience reader, ed. M. Greco and P. Stenner, 184–87.London and New York: Routledge.

———. 2008b. Non-representational theory: Space, politics,affect. London and New York: Routledge.

———. 2009. Understanding the affective spaces of politi-cal performance. In Emotions, place and culture, ed. M.Smith, J. Davidson, L. Cameron, and L. Bondi, 79–96.Surrey, UK: Ashgate.

Tolia-Kelly, D. P. 2006. Affect—An ethnocentric en-counter? Exploring the “universalist” imperative of emo-tional/affectual geographies. Area 38 (2): 213–17.

Tomkins, S. 1995. What and where are the primary affects?Some evidence for a theory (with Robert McCarter). InExploring affect, ed. E. V. Demos, 217–62. Cambridge,UK: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge.

Vriesendorp, C., and R. Foster. 2010. Regional overview,overflight, inventory sites, and human communities vis-ited. In Peru: Maijuna, Rapid Biological and Social In-ventories Report 22, ed. M. P. Gilmore, C. Vriesendorp,W. S. Alverson, A. del Campo, R. von May, C. LopezWong, and S. Rıos Ochoa, 171–75. Chicago: The FieldMuseum.

Watkins, M. 2010. Desiring recognition, accumulating af-fect. In The affect theory reader, ed. M. Gregg andG. J. Seigworth, 269–85. Durham, NC: Duke UniversityPress.

Yashar, D. J. 2005. Contesting citizenship in Latin America.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Correspondence: Department of Geography, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, e-mail: [email protected] (Young); New CenturyCollege, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, e-mail: [email protected] (Gilmore).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 11:

18 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014