Colloque International: Le CHIFFRE et la CARTE Université du Québec à Montréal, Salle PK-1140 Vendredi 22 septembre, 10 h 45-12 h 15

1. Geographical Imaginations and Nation Building:
Façonner les gens et les territoires au Canada,
de 1871 à aujourd’hui
Tracey 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

2. 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.

3. • Atlas of Canada
• 1906-Present
• “ A portrait of Canada ”
• Census of Canada
• 1871-2011
• “ The stock taking of the people ”
Case Studies

4. 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)

5. 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.

6. • 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. Is gouvernementale, biopolitical & a socio-technopolitical
state formation activity that helps construct geographical
imaginations
Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI)
CGDI

10. 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

11. 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 Imaginations
Data 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)

12. 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’

13. Hacking ‘Making up People’ Framework
5 Interactive Elements of
the Looping Effect
7 Engines of Discovery
3 Derived Engines

14. 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)

15. Resisting a spatial arrangement

16. Modified Framework ‘Making up Spaces’

17. Examples
The World, 2nd Edition Atlas of Canada, Circa 1914

18. Atlas of Canada - Case Study

19. 1. National Atlas Defined
(Harley, Schulten, Ackerman, Monmonier, Salichtchev, Brouillette, IGU,
Nicholson, Symons, Taylor, Groot, Edney, Buckley, Vasquez de Maure)

20. 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)

21. 3. Atlas of Canada Content

22. Atlas Content Groupings

23. 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

24. 4. a) Relief
1st Edition 2nd Edition 3rd Edition
4th Edition
5th Edition
6th Edition

25. Fremlin’s Relief Profiles, 4th edition

26. 4. b) Forest
6th Edition
3rd Edition
4th Edition
1st Edition 2nd Edition
5th Edition

27. 4. c) Communication Infrastructure
1st Edition 2nd Edition
3rd Edition
4th Edition
5th Edition

28. 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

29. 5th Edition Treaties Map

30. 4. d) Territorial Evolution
6th Edition
1st Edition
2nd Edition
3rd Edition
4th Edition
5th Edition

31. Census of Canada - Case Study

32. 1. Census History and Definition

33. 2. Census of Canada
NOTE: The
Long-form
census is re-
instated and
taken in 2016

34. 3. Census of Canada Question

35. • Examined 2 classifications across time
• Citizenship and Immigration
• Official Language
• All elements & engines of the Hacking’s framework
4. 2 Topics

36. 4. a) Citizenship & Immigration

37. 4. a) Citizenship & Immigration cntd.

38. 4. b) Official Languages

39. 4 b.) Mother Tongues of the Population
Map, B & B,Commission, Book I 1967

40. 4. b) Bilingual districts & Board

41. 4.b) Imagining the geolinguistic landscape

42. • 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