I’ve been reflecting some more on how to do research about and for OpenStreetMap recently. Here’s my latest brain dump:

One of the reasons I’m afraid to do my PhD research is because ethnography and mapping are not a usual combination in both the academic and professional spheres in GIS. Mapping is used in doing the usual ethnographic studies. But the ethnography of mapping itself seems to be rare. It flips the gaze around - instead of the mapping professional observing the place and people, it is the mapping professional who is being observed.

This method lays bare many of the values, assumptions, and interests that we the mapmakers have when performing the social, technological, and scientific work.

Please let me explain further. My favourite metaphor is about restaurants and food. Some people are only interested in the food itself - how it tastes, etc. Others are interested in what happens in the kitchen - the recipe, who the chef is, etc. Others are interested in what happens to you after you eat it and go home. Only a few are really interested in how the ingredients were farmed; the ethics of the farming labour; how much water was consumed and carbon dioxide released in farming; lost food mass in transport; energy used in trucking; what happened to the budget of the customer; the news and gossip that went around because of the eating experience; the number of likes that the food blogger got, etc. In contrast, we are only usually interested in what is served in front of us. In other words, I just want a nice meal. I just want to have a good map in my hand.

This is even more complicated because I am both cook and eater - I make and use maps. And my fellow map producers-consumers, a.k.a. prod-users, might not be comfortable with this way of knowing the world because we have the privilege of appearing as objective promoters of empirical knowledge through that useful but imperfect artefact called Geographic Information Systems. But we take maps seriously because decisions based upon them affect the people and places we care about, right?

And I thank you, bows hehe 🤣