Читать книгу GIS Research Methods - Steven J. Steinberg - Страница 41

Every research project has a context, which is the setting for your issue or project. To understand a situation, you need to understand the place where it occurs. Where is your issue located? Is it in a far-away place or an urban area? Who lives there? What do they have access to? What is the surrounding environment like?

Let’s assume for a moment that you are an anthropologist studying health for a rural indigenous society in Brazil. Part of understanding the group and its culture involves understanding the environment or context in which the group functions. For instance, is the group you are studying living in a rain forest? Is there a health clinic where the group is located? If not, what is their proximity to a city or town that has a health clinic? How long does it take to get to the nearest city or town? Do the people travel by river or road? Do the people collect herbs and other products from their environment to stay healthy? Where are these products located in proximity to the village?

Capturing the context of a people is a very important factor when considering almost any social phenomenon. As an example, if you were to map the original settlements of Californian indigenous tribes, you would see that their settlement patterns often followed surrounding watershed boundaries. In other words, the physical landscape features influenced the clustering patterns and social communities, including the topography of the land, water, trees, and wildlife. All of these factors together effectively determined the physical locations of the tribal communities and their access to resources.