Over the last few weeks I have been considering how GIS can accurately reflect environments across different cultures, and I would like to continue to draw upon the distinctions Smith and Mark make between primary and secondary theory. I argue that primary theory is primarily objective whereas secondary theory is subjective, and consider these implications as they are situated in GIScience.
Smith and Mark detail that there is a “high degree of correspondence between primary-theoretical beliefs and the reality towards which they are directed,” (7) building on their claim that primary theory isn’t culturally dependent. Objects in primary theory are perceived pretty accurately; Smith and Mark state they have to be in order for us to live with and among them. For me, this seems easy to incorporate into a GIS that can be used across cultures, despite the fact that (and as noted by ClimateNYC) some cultures may not know what a mountain is after living in Kansas plains for their entire lives. This doesn’t matter though, because primary theory is “tailored to the… characteristic of the human species and… has formed the main support of human life” (7). This is to say that despite one culture lacking an awareness or theory about mountains, for example, it can still be displayed in a GIS because another culture has an established theory, and it is argued that “each primary theory is a theory about what actually exists in reality” (11).
This isn’t so clear with secondary theory where there are “startling differences [in phenomena perception]… as one moves from community to community” (7). GIS attempts to have geographic concepts which are consistent with the user’s mental model of the concepts of the world. How can we do this when users’ mental models vary greatly across cultures? I struggle to see how both the “mechanistic view of the world” held by Westerners and the “spiritualistic world-view” (7) of African communities can be held simultaneously in a program. This can further be applied to natural languages and semantics in GIS—these are not uniform across all cultures and users. How can programs be established that capture the nuances in different languages, in different perceptions of the environment? Further explorations of spatial cognition may provide good avenues for development of this idea.
Smith, B, and D M. Mark. “Do Mountains Exist? Towards an Ontology of Landforms.” Environment and Planning. B, Planning & Design. 30 (2003): 411-428.
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Tags: theory