ABSTRACT: The central argument of this dissertation is that Canadian reality is conditioned by government data and their related infrastructures. Specifically, that Canadian geographical imaginations are strongly influenced by the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada. Both are long standing government institutions that inform government decision-making, and are normally considered to be objective and politically neutral. It is argued that they may also not be entirely politically neutral even though they may not be influenced by partisan politics, because social, technical and scientific institutions nuance objectivity. These institutions or infrastructures recede into the background of government operations, and although invisible, they shape how Canadian geography and society are imagined. Such geographical imaginations, it is argued, are important because they have real material and social effects. In particular, this dissertation empirically examines how the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada, as knowledge formation objects and as government representations, affect social and material reality and also normalize subjects. It is also demonstrated that the Ian Hacking dynamic Looping Effect framework of ‘Making Up People’ is not only useful to the human sciences, but is also an effective methodology that geographers can adapt and apply to the study of ‘Making Up Spaces’ and geographical imaginations. His framework was adapted to the study of the six editions of the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada between 1871 and 2011. Furthermore, it is shown that the framework also helps structure the critical examination of discourse, in this case, Foucauldian gouvernementalité and the biopower of socio-techno-political systems such as a national atlas and census, which are inextricably embedded in a social, technical and scientific milieu. As objects they both reflect the dominant value system of their society and through daily actions, support the dominance of this value system. While it is people who produce these objects, the infrastructures that operate in the background have technological momentum that also influence actions. Based on the work of Bruno Latour, the Atlas and the Canadian census are proven to be inscriptions that are immutable and mobile, and as such, become actors in other settings. Therefore, the Atlas of Canada and the Census of Canada shape and are shaped by geographical imaginations.

1. Data, Infrastructures & Geographic Imaginations
Tracey P. Lauriault
PhD Defence Presentation
Dept. Geography and Environmental Studies
Wednesday May 23rd, 9:30 AM, Carleton University, Loeb Building room D382.

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

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. Methodology
• 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)

7. Data
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)

8. Data Infrastructures
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)

9. CGDI
Is gouvernementale, biopolitical & a socio-technopolitical
state formation activity that helps construct geographical
imaginations
Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (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. 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)
Said - Orientalism Wright - Terrae Incognitae
Cosgrove - Appollo’s Eye Tang - The Geographic Imagination of Modernity
Anderson - Imagined Communities Schulten - The Geographical Imagination in America
Lefebvre - The Production of Space 1880-1950
Debarbieux - Imagination et imaginaire géographiques Winichakul - Geo-body

12. Hacking – Framework of ‘making up people’
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

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

14. Classification & Material Effects
Infirmities Category of
Unsound Mind, Schedule 1
Nominal Return of the Living
of the 1871 Census, Nova
Scotia (CCRI, 2012)
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

15. Resisting a spatial arrangement

16. Modified Framework ‘Making up Spaces’
5 Interactive Elements of 6 Engines of Discovery
the Looping Effect 3 Derived Engines

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 • scientification
• knowledge • normalization
• Experts • bureaucratization

21. 3. Atlas of Canada Content

22. Atlas Content Groupings

23. 4 Map Topics
Examining 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

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

25. Fremlin’s Relief Profiles, 4th edition

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

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

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

29. 5 th Edition Treaties Map
5th Edition

30. Census of Canada - Case Study

31. 1. Census History and Definition

32. 2. Census of Canada

33. 3. Census of Canada Question

34. 4. 2 Topics
• Examined 2 classifications across time
• All elements & engines of the Hacking’s framework

35. 4. a) Citizenship & Immigration

36. 4. a) Citizenship & Immigration cntd.

37. 4. b) Official Languages

38. 4. b) Language cndt.

39. Conclusion
• Atlas of Canada and ‘making up spaces’
• Census of Canada and ‘making up spaces’
• Socio-Technopolitics, Gouvernementalité and Biopower
• Hacking’s Framework and Geography
• Contributions to Geography
• Conclusion