Downey Liam
University of Colorado.
AJS. 2006 Sep;112(2):567-612. doi: 10.1086/506418?origin=JSTOR-pdf.
In this article, the author demonstrates how geographic information system (GIS) software can be used to reconceptualize spatial relationships and ecological context and address the modifiable areal unit problem. In order to do this, the author uses GIS to (1) test an important category of spatial hypotheses (spatial proximity hypotheses), (2) overcome methodological problems that arise when data sets are not spatially comparable, and (3) measure ecological context. The author introduces a set of GIS variable construction techniques that are designed to accomplish these tasks, illustrates these techniques empirically by using them to test spatial proximity hypotheses drawn from the literature on environmental inequality, and demonstrates that results obtained using these techniques are methodologically superior to and substantively different from results obtained using traditional techniques. Finally, the author demonstrates that these techniques are the product of an alternative conceptualization of physical space that allows sociologists to develop new ways to think about and measure spatial relationships, ecological context, and place-based social inequality and that gives them the ability to reconceptualize spatially based methodological problems that have confronted them for years.
在本文中，作者展示了地理信息系统（GIS）软件如何能够用于重新概念化空间关系和生态背景，并解决可修改面积单元问题。为了做到这一点，作者使用GIS来（1）检验一类重要的空间假设（空间邻近假设），（2）克服当数据集在空间上不可比时出现的方法学问题，以及（3）衡量生态背景。作者引入了一组旨在完成这些任务的GIS变量构建技术，通过使用它们来检验从环境不平等文献中得出的空间邻近假设，从经验上说明了这些技术，并证明使用这些技术获得的结果在方法学上优于且在实质上不同于使用传统技术获得的结果。最后，作者表明这些技术是对物理空间的另一种概念化的产物，它使社会学家能够开发新的方式来思考和衡量空间关系、生态背景以及基于地点的社会不平等，并使他们有能力重新概念化多年来一直困扰他们的基于空间的方法学问题。
