GIS의 ‘패션’

Abstract

This paper aims to understand one of the subfields in Geography (i.e., Geographic Information Systems/Science, GIS) by employing the concept of “fashion,” where it was originally proposed by Sperber for understanding scientific research. Fashion, in this context, is defined as an invisible trend of collective behavior determined by a series of intersubjective obsessions that belong to researchers. According to Sperber, such fashion might seem to include rather arbitrary and haphazard elements, but in fact its mechanism is extremely structured and artificial and well managed by a small number of fashion leaders. The present paper applied this fashion approach on GIS to comprehend the discipline with the perspective of a geographer. It was found that ontologies of GIS have included a few fashions, where those have been controlled by the fashion leader. As a result, the leader has shaped the discipline ever since, where his prestige was supported by hegemonic languages of Science and keen academic insights that are rooted in his scholarship. In conclusion, this fashion approach appears providing informative metaknowledge that helps geographers to understand the discipline more clearly by detaching the science hegemony from the field.