ABSTRACT
Whereas human geography has largely embraced the view that landscapes and the spatiality of social life are socially constructed, users and theoreticians of geospatial technologies have been much slower to do so. This chapter argues that social constructivism has made steady inroads into this domain through the growth of neogeography, deep maps, and big data. In the process, it calls for geographers to be sensitive to how data are collected and toward what purposes it is put. The conclusion differentiates between ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ modes through which social theory has engaged with GIS and related tools holds that social constructivism obligates GIS users to study relational rather than absolute space, and calls for an epistemologically self-conscious geoscience that takes seriously issues of power and inequality.
