Watching and Mapping The Wire : Taking the Spatial Turn in Political Science
While the humanities embraced the value of spatial analysis some time ago; political science has yet to marry traditional social science methods with the visual and interactive process of mapping. Some may consider mapping, or spatial analysis, as descriptive without much analytical power. This project argues for the introduction to mapping to a course in the social sciences. My colleague Paul Achter and I and teach a course on The Wire, a critically acclaimed series from David Simon aired on HBO, is a five-part series on the problems facing the City of Baltimore. The Wire is uniquely suited to ‘deep mapping’ because of the role of city spaces in every season. The City of Baltimore is a character as much as any of the human characters in the series. Initiating a class project on creating and developing a spatial map of The Wire locations as a way of understanding Simon's critique of contemporary political and social policy. Politics drive economic disparity and public and private decisions about the use of spaces. A deep map of The Wire could connect episodes spatially to reveal the relationship between location and opportunity, safety, justice, access to jobs, and quality of schools