ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION 
Irresolvable Geographies 
by MARIE C!ERI 
Dissertation Director: 


Neil Smith 


What Icall "irresolvable geographies" are the subject of this dissertation. These are geographies that are not reducible, cannot be fixed in uncontested, inalterable meanings, cannot be 'solved" within a traditional framework of proving mathematical equations or fixing chronic social problems. My study of irresolvable geographies grows out of one of the central premises of critical social geography, that space is constructed and continually contested from a number of cultural, economic and political points of view. Rather than attempting to further unfold this idea on a primarily textual and theoretical level, my goal has been to explore and represent the contested and indeterminate nature of spaces and places through a concerted rethinking and use of geographic methodologies in combination with techniques drawn from the arts and popular culture. In fact, what Iam largely attempting to do is develop new, potent and accessible ways of telling geographic stones that emanate not so much from authoritative sources such as government officials, planners, the news media, law enforcement, marketers apd the geographic mainstream as from the populations themselves that ate generally studied, represented andlor acted upon by these authorities. In large part, developing new and effective ways of giving voice to the perceptions of those who are usually represented can be seen as a way of transferring some of the power inherent in the generation and communication of geographic information to those who generally lack it.This work also is critical of the positivist approach still widely practiced within geography and currently 

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dominant within the employment of geographic information systems. Idiscuss the history, theories and methodologies that underlie my work, but primary attention is given to three projects that demonstrate the approaches Iam taking as well as the activist intent of the work. While these alternative representations of space and place are not intended as new essentialist geographies to replace the old, Ido offer them as truer, more complex and less bounded pictures of geographic space than those usually provided by the mainstream. 

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