In the last week, I’ve come across several open access articles that might be of interest to geographers who engage with computers and software in their work. The first, written by James Ash, Rob Kitchin, and Agnieszka Leszczynski, begins with a nice summary of work in the discipline that has dealt with digital issues. The authors then argue that we shouldn’t have a separate field of “digital geography,” but, rather, we should think about how the digital has reshaped many of our objects of study. Here’s the abstract:

In this paper, we examine the relationship between the digital and geography. Our analysis provides an overview of the rich scholarship that has examined: (1) geographies of the digital, (2) geographies produced by the digital, and (3) geographies produced through the digital. Using this material we reflect on two questions: has there been a digital turn in geography? and, would it be productive to delimit ‘digital geography’ as a field of study within the discipline, as has recently occurred with the attempt to establish ‘digital anthropology’ and ‘digital sociology’? We argue that while there has been a digital turn across geographical sub-disciplines, the digital is now so pervasive in mediating the production of space and in producing geographic knowledge that it makes little sense to delimit digital geography as a distinct field. Instead, we believe it is more productive to think about how the digital reshapes many geographies.

You can download a copy on the Social Science Research Network page.

Also of interest is the new issue of Surveillance & Society–a double issue with a theme of “Surveillance Asymmetries and Ambiguities.” While I haven’t read it through yet, many of the abstracts sound very promising as scholars attempt to complicate understandings of power relations, especially in relation to computational surveillance practices.