Week 2 August 14-21

LOOKING AT MAPS

“Maps are like milk: their information is perishable, and it is wise to check the date.”

 “Like guns and crosses, maps can be good or bad, depending on who’s holding them, who they’re aimed at, how they’re used, and why"

Mark Monmoneir, Syracuse University of Geography

Author of How to Lie with Maps

Take a few minutes to explore this mapping tool which helps show the problems with the Mercator map. What happens when you type in Russia and move that country south to the equator? What happens when you type in Dem. Rep. Congo and move it north over Europe? What happens when you move Brasil over the United States?

How do the maps you look at shape the way you see the world?

South-up Peters projection. Daniel R. Strebe, CC BY-SA

South Up? 

North is up, right? Only by convention. There’s no scientific reason why north is any more up than south. Equally, we could do east-up, west-up or any other compass bearing. Purposefully reversing the typical way world maps are drawn has a similar political effect to using the Peters projection, putting more developing countries in the generally poorer southern hemisphere at the top of the map and so giving them greater significance.

But some of the first known world maps put south at the top as a matter of course. For example, in 1154 Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi drew a south-up map of Europe, Asia and northern Africa for his book the Tabula Rogeriana. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen in the center of the map but, of course, pointing upwards rather than the more familiar downwards.

1927 recreation of the Tabula Rogeriana. Muhammad al-Idrisi/Konrad Miller

Pacific-centered

Another convention of world maps is that they are centered on the prime meridian, or zero degrees longitude (east-west). But this is scientifically arbitrary, deriving from the location of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. The result is that Europe (although also Africa) is in the center of the conventional world map – a rather colonial perspective.

 

Pacific-centered map. DEMIS Mapserver/Wikimedia

The familiar meridian-centered map conveniently places the map edges down the middle of the Pacific Ocean so no continent is chopped in two. But maps centered on the Pacific Ocean also work well because the edges of the map conveniently run down the middle of the Atlantic. This places east Asia in a more prominent position and pushes Europe to the edge. Much of Oceania and Asia uses Pacific-centered maps. (American-centered maps are also in use, but these have the unfortunate consequence of partitioning Asia to either side of the map.)

Our meridian-centered view of the world shapes how we refer to world regions. “Far East”, for example, implies far from Greenwich, London. Seeing Europe on the left of a map and the Americas on the right can seem counter-intuitive, but it is just as correct as any other arbitrary chop point. The world is, after all, round.

Azimuthal polar projection

Azimuthal equidistant projection. Daniel R. Strebe, CC BY-SA

All the projections we’ve discussed so far tend to put one continent in the middle of the map, giving it greater prominence over the others. An alternative is to place the North Pole in the centre. It is strangely disorienting to gaze on the world from a polar perspective. The lower hemisphere should be hidden from view by the curve of the Earth because you can only see half a sphere at a time.

But on the azimuthal polar projection from the north, the southern hemisphere has been pulled into view on the page, with the consequence that Antarctica centrifuges into a doughnut around the edge of the circular map. This highlights the disadvantage of the projection as it distorts both the area and shape of landmasses, but distances from the North Pole are accurate in all directions, with those further from the centre becoming more enlarged on their east-west axis.

UN logo. United Nations

This “azimuthal” polar projection is depicted on the United Nations flag. North America was prominent on the initial 1945 UN flag (which had the longitude line 90 degrees west pointing upwards). The following year, the map on the flag was reoriented to be more neutral by having the international date line (180 degrees east, lying in the middle of the Pacific Ocean) pointing upwards. The map stops at latitude 60 degrees south, meaning Antarctica does not appear.

Credit to Donald Houston from the University of  Portsmouth for this article. 

https://theconversation.com/five-maps-that-will-change-how-you-see-the-world-74967

HOMEWORK

This week you should continue working on your regional maps and areas of interest for Unit 1.

Read: Prisoners of Geography chapters 3 and 4


Check the news: Find a recent news or magazine article (within the last 90 days) about one of the countries we are studying in unit 1.  In the comments of this post write a 2-3 sentence synopsis of the article and another 2-3 sentences on why you think the story was interesting or important.  Provide the link to the article in your comment.  You must choose a story on a different subject or from the opposing perspective of one posted by your classmates.  

Review it!
Lecture 2
 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1esv12b9i89E6vCfTMdP7_h_Wavz6NwBgcRFz8C6s3aY/edit?usp=sharing