`The wide ranging contributions to this very important volume demonstrate how success in using GIS to understand society is intimately linked to society's understanding of GIS. The Editors have created the definitive guide to a technology that succeeds or fails depending upon our ability to accommodate societal context and structures. This handbook is lucid, integrative, comprehensive and, above all, prescient in its interpretation of GIS implementation as a societal process.'<BR><BR>Paul Longley, Professor of Geographic Information Science, University College London.<BR><BR>Over the past twenty years research on the evolving relationship between GIS and Society has been expanding into a wide variety of topical areas, becoming in the process an increasingly challenging and multifaceted endeavour. The SAGE Handbook of GIS and Society is a retrospective and prospective overview of GIS and Society research that provides an expansive and critical assessment of work in that field.<BR><BR>Emphasizing the theoretical, methodological and substantive diversity within GIS and Society research, the book highlights the distinctiveness and intellectual coherence of the subject as a field of study, while also examining its resonances with and between key themes and among disciplines ranging from geography and computer science to sociology, anthropology, and the health and environmental sciences.<BR><BR>Aimed at academics, researchers, postgraduates, and GIS practitioners, this Handbook will be the basic reference for any inquiry applying Geographical Information Science to societal issues.