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 Tracey.Lauriault@carleton.ca

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