Multi-cultural Aspects of Spatial Knowledge

The review of how the question of cultural differences was posed at different times reveals a great deal about the conceptualization of GIS at different time and makes a critical review interesting.

Abstract

It is trivial to observe differences between cultures: people use different languages, have different modes of building houses and organize their cities differently, to mention only a few. Differences in the culture of different people were and still are one of the main reasons for travel to foreign countries. The question whether cultural differences are relevant for the construction of Geographic Information Systems is longstanding (Burrough et al. 1995) and is of increasing interest since geographic information is widely accessible using the web and users volunteer information to be included in the system (Goodchild 2007). The review of how the question of cultural differences was posed at different times reveals a great deal about the conceptualization of GIS at different times and makes a critical review interesting.