Validating Segregated Observers: Mapping West Bank Settlements From Without and Within

In this paper, I argue that segregation affects the process of collecting empirical data, and therefore shapes the content of scientific and technological knowledge. Through a comparison of the maps of Israeli settlements made by two premier non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the West Bank, one Palestinian and one Israeli, I demonstrate how segregated landscapes not only separate populations, but they also serve to reproduce disjunct observations among cartographers who map areas, and use technologies, that ostensibly are the same.

Since 1967, Israel has occupied the Palestinian Territories and hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers have moved into segregated communities in the West Bank. However, it is difficult to produce reliable statistics for the expansion of these settlements, because this requires the ability to make observations on the ground—a practice which is often as segregated as the region that cartographers seek to map. Israeli efforts benefit from the infrastructure the state provides, and take place largely within Israeli settlements, thereby depicting Palestinian areas from without. In contrast, Palestinians work within Palestinian communities, but must map Israeli settlements from without, including recording the locations of buildings which they may only be able to view from a distance. In theory, such segregation should not affect the data collected, but in practice it has a profound effect on the resulting maps.

This research contributes to work which analyzes the role of international forms of knowledge in entrenching the Israeli occupation. In addition, to Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the sociology of science literatures, I provide a conception of the ways that empirical knowledge is geographically produced, as well as socially constructed. Overall, I aim for a better understanding of how the materialities of knowledge interact with imbalances of power, with the goal of enabling landscapes that are more epistemologically diverse.