Scenario:
Identify maps and geospatial resources on French nationalism and French colonialism through library resources and a selection of resources outside the library.
Approach:
When faced with a research question, it is important to consider different angles of interpretation. Often it isn’t until you are well into your research that you reach a full understanding of how you will answer the aforementioned question. Examining this question, I aimed to address what parameters could possibly be represented through maps or geographic information systems (GIS) resources and inform on nationalism and colonialism in France. I started by asking myself which topics I have discussed in relation to Nationalism and Colonialism in my courses. Being a French major, these themes play a role in many of my history and culture classes. Immigration, Religion, Language were the first three ideas to come to mind.
Pertinent Questions:
While these first terms may not give me specific or concise results, they act as a springboard to launch me into narrowing or broadening my thinking. France was a Christian country, so does this mean that we can use religion to make an argument about nationalism? Would communities with higher percentages of Catholics tend to be more nationalist? Is that even a question that I can ask? How would we be able to make this connection given that the data exists? When colonialism is mentioned I think of a possible way to measure influence as language. Often when country A is colonized by country B, country B will impose their language on country A in order to establish dominance. Perhaps a visual of where French is spoken could inform on France’s impact as a Colonizer. How can we measure Nationalism? How can we measure colonialism? Is inferring, for example, a correlation between religion and nationalism sound?
Asking questions like this as you go through your research can allow you to acknowledge the possible gaps in your question.
Maps and GIS resources to consider:
Below, you can see an example of how Social Explorer is used, and how it can be an extremely useful tool for visualization of population linked data. Because Social Explorer does not show detailed data for Europe, we were unable to use it to specifically answer our above questions; however the potential breadth of impact use of this database has should not be underestimated.
Clare M Belmonte, Maps and Geospatial Information Assistant
French and Francophone Studies (Language and Culture) Major
Biology Minor