From PGIS to Participatory Deep Mapping and Spatial Storytelling: An Evolving Trajectory in Community Knowledge Representation in GIS

Participatory GIS (PGIS) was borne out of the cauldron of the GIS and Society debates and the social theoretic critique of GIS. The form and practice of PGIS continues to reflect its origins. At its core PGIS remains focused on integrating local knowledge that is multivalent, equivocal, and often conflictual within a reductionist GIS technology and extensive Spatial Data Infrastructure. Recent conceptual developments in deep mapping and spatial storytelling have the potential to advance the representation of community knowledge through participatory deep mapping. Deep mapping explicitly recognizes that social life is contingent, implicated, and unpredictable. In representing a critical engagement between Geographic Information Science (GISc) and community knowledge and representation, deep mapping potentially challenges the misalignment in representing community knowledge in GIS and in bending geospatial technologies to the needs of communities.