The first two weeks of our reading and discussion have introduced us to the nomadic urgency of the human spirit (Chatwin), a three-fold typology of human development (Gellner),necessity of alterity in the constitution of identity (Wikipedia and "The Secret Sharer"), as well as the problematic unrepresentativeness of our presumed geopolitical understanding of the Earth. Our classroom experience of ostranie is underway and it is in the spirit of this strangeness that we take up our next writing task.
Our queries this week grow from our reading in The Myth of Continents: What is the politics of our mistaken metageography? How does its correction by Lewis and Wigen affect our understanding of the "real" world? To help you with your thinking and writing on these questions I offer the following historical comment by David Hooson from a review of Lewis and Wigen:
Geography's primary quest, ever since it was given intellectual coherence by the Greeks, has simply been for an accurate and meaningful understanding of our world and the diversity of its parts. As the known world was gradually extended from the Mediterranean and then rapidly yet tentatively reshaped following the discoveries, to be finally rounded out scientifically in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the regional divisions grew to reflect the inexorable dominance of Europe. These divisions, primarily the perceived "continents" along with such value-laden concepts like West and East or Eurocentric labels like the Far East, have stuck. In the period following World War II, with the onset of the cold war and the dismantling of the colonial empires, East and West acquired a fresh ideological twist. A newly discovered Third World appeared, leading to another economically based macrodichotomy, the North-South divide. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union these categories have perforce had to be revised or retired, as increasing anomalies make the generalizations less true and useful. Clearly, it has become more urgent and necessary to reconfigure the many faces of our world "for the Millennium" and to change our geographical mind-sets to cope with new situations and rapidly emerging predicaments on the global scene.
OK. Go to it. I look forward to your posts.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM
ReplyDeleteAbove is a link to the YouTube video of the West Wing “Why Are We Changing Maps?” from episode 216. Not much knowledge of the show is needed prior to viewing the clip, just that West Wing is about the West Wing of the White House. One day each year the staff members hear from people who would not normally be able to get appointments. CJ, the spokesperson for the President, is assigned to meet with the cartographers. This reaffirms what Lewis and Wigen state at the top of page 10 about the “exaggerate[d]…importance of Europe”
At 3:02, Huke brings up the idea that size is related to power. I will give Mercator the benefit of the doubt and say that he never intentionally made Europe larger than South America as part of a power struggle but rather to “make it easier to cross an ocean” as was stated in the clip. Psychologically, though, I would have to agree that size does make a difference. Lewis and Wigen point out that Asia and Europe the same page space in an atlas yet Asia is much larger. I personally never thought about this until I considered China. In the atlases at my middle school, I vividly remember seeing a plethora of cities on the eastern side, but not much happening in the west. Yet, with a billion people in the country, there must be something that has been left out due to the fact that it has been put on such a small page.
One thing I do find myself questioning about Lewis and Wigen is their point concerning the “civil war” in Sudan. While it is true that the Northern Sudanese may be more like Egypt than Southern Sudan, they are still a country, no matter who drew the lines. While America’s civil war was nothing close to genocide, we did do things that most people now consider unethical and speak out against every day. It is difficult to say that by just drawing a new boundary the conflict will be resolved. For one, who gets to determine that boundary? If anything is clear from the last 200 years, it is that people outside of the country should not be the ones to dictate who is included in what part. Cartographers could decide to draw not only national boundaries, but also ethnic boundaries, but those are not as clear or stable as the lines of a nation. Also, at what point do you declare an area to be different? Minnesota has the largest population of Hmongs outside of Southeast Asia. Should they be considered their own entity within the state? Or can they be part of Minnesota while still holding their identity, no matter how different the two worlds may be?
I do believe that we need to start educating students not just on where the continents are (although sometimes I seriously wonder if they even learn that much), but it is a struggle to say just how much they need to know. There are over 200 countries in the world to learn about and if you have to subdivide them even further into cultural groups it could take years to get through the whole list. Of course you could take it as studying cultures independent of what countries you find each group, but then which cultures get included and how far must you subdivide into those groups to differentiate the anomalies within themselves?
The politics of metageography is one that is inherently biased towards a eurocentric point of view. This mistake in our perceptions can not be blamed towards racism or a systematic dislike of those from other cultures, but rather our inherent desire to overemphasize our own importance. Therefore, the European cartographers who created our current conception of their world through their mapping of the world during their settling of various lands. Since I believe it is fruitless to entirely overcome our current conception of the world through our divisions of continents, we should continue to teach geography with the current system of continents. Despite this, we should teach that these continents are simply arbitrary divisions and have no standing on culture, demographics, or beliefs. When students are aware that these arbitrary continents have no standing on the identity of their inhabitants, the next generation won't see the world in only six groups.
ReplyDeleteLewis and Wiggen teach us that we must not view geography through these arbitrary divisions. They explain that there is really no method that works whether it is East vs. West, 7 continents, or first, second, or third world country. All of these divisions are made up based off of divisions made by European colonialists rather than the cultural subgroups who compose these areas. Lewis and Wiggen are correct in teaching us that we must not take what we have been taught previously for granted, but we must act as active learners when approaching geographic divisions. Lewis and Wiggen are incorrect in their decision that an appropriate way to approach modern geography is through geographic regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, eastern Europe, and southeastern Asia. I believe that dividing the world into regions will always force us to overlook certain groups by putting large groups of people into a single demographic.
Therefore my proposal towards approaching education about geography is that we must divide geography into two different disciplines. The first would be one in which we keep our traditional geographic divisions so that our students can easily locate locations on the map and have a thorough conceptional view of the world. We then must have a second discipline where we emphasize that these geographic divisions have no bearing on the characteristics of their respective cultures. In that discipline, we would emphasize the various languages, cultures, and belief systems of the world. When we approach geography in this manner, our next generation will have a complete view of the world rather than a eurocentric view where we believe that all Asians are the same, or South Americans are distinctly different from North Americans solely because of the arbitrary division of the Panama Isthmus.
I think that the biggest problem with geography and the terms we use to describe areas today, is not the fact that these methods are inadequate but the fact that people don’t know or care that they are that way. Dividing the world into sections is necessary for communication, though it is conditional; everyone must know that the system has limitations. I whole-heartedly agree with the statement, “The neglect of geography in this country is so pervasive that the crumbling of our global geographical concepts is obscured by sheer geographical illiteracy”. In schools, it is important not only to integrate geography back into curriculums but to inform students of its flaws. I know that I never had a geography class in school and had never even considered the problems with the current divisions until reading this article. It is also not sufficient if people know about it but don’t take it into consideration when processing information about other cultures and places around the world. Essentially, I don’t necessarily think it should be a priority to remap and re-title the world; educating the public would help solve quite a bit of the problem.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to Sudan, I don’t think the authors are concluding that the “war” could be resolved if the lines were redrawn. I believe they were trying to make the point that because of the ill-conceived boundaries it could technically be considered a civil war. However, we know that even though the “war” is happening within the country, it is much more than a civil war; it’s genocide. This is just an example of how divisions can misconstrue what is actually occurring in a place.
It is hard to reverse years and years of incomplete referencing, discussions, and writings on the naming and grouping of disparate geographical regions and cultures. The predicament is not going to be solved overnight, and it’s going to require more than just drawing up a new map which will most likely have a new set of problems associated with it. Educators, world leaders, and students alike are going to have to work hard to make sure that people of this generations and the ones to come understand each other and the world they live in more fully.
While reading this work by Lewis and Wigen, I find myself in constant frustration over their picky attitudes about the globe. My primary concern is their negative stance on the “jigsaw-puzzle view of the world.” Their argument is that the world does not necessarily have to be split up by distinct boundaries. They suggest that instead, units should be allowed to overlap with room for unclaimed territory. In this day and age, solid borders around countries are necessary to function as a whole. Imagine the United States without a solid border with Mexico. There would be utter chaos and uncertainty about who would have the right to rule in certain areas. Borders are established not to divide different cultures, but attempt to end disputes over land.
ReplyDeleteAnother area in which I disagree with the authors is their opinion on the myth of nation states. They argue, “very few countries are nation-states in the strict sense of the term; seldom is an independent political territory coterrainous with the territory of a self-consciously united people.” Although I do agree with this statement, it would be virtually unrealistic to split up a country both by political and cultural boundaries. Cultural boundaries are usually extremely vague and, in many instances, vary by neighborhood. An enormous city like Chicago can have dozens of ethnic groups within walking distance of each other. To create a map of the cultures around the globe would be impossible as well as uninformative. The only logical way to split up the geography is simply by political boundaries. It is more obvious where one country starts and ends rather than where one culture begins and ends.
Even if a more productive system of labeling the globe is created, the actual transformation into the real world would be impractical. The current system of continents, countries, states and cities is so entrenched in society that a new system would take years if not decades to change. Signs would be forced to be rewritten, maps would need to be redrawn, and teachers would have to be retaught. In a world of wide ranging social problems, the minor issue of map drawing will unfortunately not be reformed.
To be honest, reading Lewis and Wigen’s passage made me feel a bit guilty. Why? Because I couldn’t help but realize that I’ve been responsible for having, at one time or another, almost every mistaken perception that they mention. Now, I realized that in class at least a few people were saying things like, “Oh, well not me. I know where Australia is.” That’s not the point. I’d be willing to bet that everyone as they were reading this identified with at least one of the mistaken perceptions that the passage mentions. That’s why it was so interesting for me to read; I couldn’t help but see just how much sense it makes.
ReplyDeleteI remember in third grade, as I’m sure many of you do, when Pokemon were “the big thing.” And I remember my mom asking me why a bunch of bizarre Chinese cartoon characters appealed so much to me. Of course, being a Pokemon expert, I quickly corrected her, saying, “It’s Japanese, mom.” “Well okay, same thing. Japanese, Chinese.” This incident stuck with me for some reason, but it didn’t quite hit me just how ridiculous it was until I think about it now. Here we have a grown, college-educated woman, more or less saying that Japan and China are essentially the same. How wrong is that? But at the same time, I know I’ve been guilty of such perceptions. When I think Asia, I tend to just think of one single Asian culture and people, which I know is so far from being true. When I think of Africa, I also tend to just think of one large, starving mass of land with a more or less homogenous people. Again, I know this is so far from the truth, but my immediate perceptions tend to swing in the direction of an oversimplified metageography.
On a large scale, this is quite scary to think about. Because again, I know I’m not the only one who has had mistaken perceptions like this. Moreover, I’m probably in the vast majority of people. I would bet that a high percentage of people, when asked what the major regions of the world are, would say something like, “Well, you got Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa… Australia… oh, and of course, ‘merica.” I don’t mean to say that people are generally stupid; many have just not really learned much about the rest of the world and don’t have much of a desire to.
There is so much ignorance concerning the metageography of our world today, but it’s hard to say just what the consequences of such a way of thinking might be. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Fear always springs from ignorance.” I think that has played a huge role in our perceptions of other countries and areas around the world, especially at the present. Many people tend group countries into broad, general regions because, quite frankly, it’s a lot simpler that way. But it also leads to incorrect perceptions, such as the idea that the Middle East is a “bad”, something that has become increasingly prevalent in the last decade or two. Also, the idea of grouping all the countries into three different levels, based on economic status is quite ridiculous. For someone to think of China or India as a “Third World” country in this day and age is a serious mistake.
However, I don’t think that this problem of mistaken metageography is one that we can, or even should focus too much attention on trying to fix. Sure, we can try to emphasize it more in our education, but in the end, most people just don’t really care to spend much time learning about the subdivisions of each country and the differences in culture and people there. Quite honestly, I don’t either. But I do think that we should just try to be more careful with how we view the regions of the world and to avoid the tendency to oversimplify its metageography. It’s not exactly a deadly mistake, but if it continues to affect the politics of generations to come, it certainly could be.
Too often, when one is presented with an idea, that idea is simply accepted as fact. Said idea fails to be properly contemplated. Though this lack of investigation may seem insignificant when considered for a single issue, the consequences of failing to inquire into the matter can be considerably farther-reaching than expected. These consequences can ultimately manifest themselves by altering one’s disposition to additional issues; such is the case regarding metageography.
ReplyDeleteThroughout early schooling, children learn basic geography, and they learn that the map of the world is absolute, rather than its true nature—an often arbitrary manifestation of cultural generalizations. Few students evaluate geographical origins to discover their genuine meaning. Amplifying this issue is the fact that most students receive only an elementary knowledge of geography. This limited knowledge, combined with a lack of inquiry, inhibits students from truly comprehending the present metageographical organization.
Geographical organization is largely a creation of political forces. Henceforth comes the term metageography, in that geography is not objective in nature as is often believed. Global divisions are purported to be a result of either physical barriers or cultural configuration. However, as Martin W. Lewis and Karen E. Wigen state, “seldom is an independent political territory coterminous with the territory of a self-consciously united people.” It is nearly impossible and equally impractical to partition the world into comprehensive organizations of like-minded people.
Instead, present geographical organization is a largely subjective construction resulting from various political and economic conflicts. An overwhelming portion of the African continent’s national boundaries is a result of European colonization driven by economic prosperity. In the famous “Scramble for Africa,” European nations colonized a majority of the African continent in order to exploit an underutilized market. The geographical development of that region is just one example of a worldwide phenomenon in which political forces drive geographical development.
Nevertheless, modification of the system has yet to be embraced as a plausible undertaking for one primary reason—preservation of the status quo. An adaptation of world organization to a more pertinent structure will require worldwide cooperation. However, the West—a cultural mindset rather than a geographic area (which will be embraced for the sake of argument)—seems to be content with the present state of affairs. Lewis and Wigen observe a “notion that the West is coincident with modernity and that the non-West can enter the modern world only to the extent that it emulates the norms established in Europe and northern North America.” The world therefore suffers from a Eurocentric attitude. It follows that children are deceived by this misguided notion from early ages, subsequently forming a conditioned bias to view the West superior to the East.
Essentially, many societies then suffer from groupthink, in which large groups of people blindly accept the ideas presented to them. This unconscious unawareness creates a perception of the “real” world as one in which the West is superior to the incompatible East. Nevertheless, it is the lack of investigation of this acquired notion of Western supremacy that results in greater misconceptions about the organization of the world community.
Possibly the most debilitating repercussion of a lack of intuitive investigation into the metageographical organization of the world is that of an inability to discover one’s true self. True self-discovery requires not only understanding who one is, but also who one is not. Simple acceptance of metageography creates a misconception of superiority and an illusion of irreconcilable differences. Thus, one never attempts to understand the “other” people groups throughout the world. In failing to do so, one is unable to evaluate the “other,” and therefore incapable of arriving at a true comprehension of oneself.
As Lewis and Wigen point out in their book, there is a serious problem with how we view geography today. The major problem is that we tend to be too ready to accept the views of geography that have been handed to us. This is understandable, as we have grown up with certain ideas of a world that is much larger than we can fully comprehend. Lewis and Wigen correctly point out that, in our society, there is not much of an arena for challenging geographical concepts. World geography is rarely taught in depth to primary and high school students and at universities, it is rare to find a true course that teaches world geography. Because of this, we tend to accept the world as we see it in maps that we find in books, rarely challenging the way they are set up and the boundaries that they present. This stagnant view of the world does little to help us understand the actual state of places in the world and it does not account for the dynamic nature of people and cultures.
ReplyDeleteBecause of this blind acceptance of the way things are, we tend to use territorial lines of countries as convenient ways to divide up the world. Looking at a map, the uneducated observer would readily accept that one person from a country is very similar to the next by virtue of where they live, and that once one crosses the border from one country to another, the culture would dramatically shift. A rough poll of men in my dorm indicates that the main language of Switzerland is Swiss. The funny thing is that there is no such language as Swiss. Switzerland has not one, but four national languages: French, German, Italian, and Romansh. This partitioned view of the world tends neglect the natural flow of cultures and people and fit them into nice categories that are easy to digest.
When discussing regions, we even tend to use these predetermined lines of demarcation because it’s easier to package things together. The Midwest is often considered to be Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, but the industrial culture of northern Ohio bears little resemblance to the rural farm culture of Iowa.
In the end, it is clear that we need to reevaluate how we look at the world. Territorial lines are great when talking about where one government’s jurisdiction ends and another’s begins, but to really gain an “accurate and meaningful understanding of our world and the diversity of its parts,” we need to regard the world as a more fluid ocean of people, where one culture flows into the next seamlessly. By doing this, we can get a better idea of how cultures work and where problems come from.
Although many of my classmates had a strong feeling of opposition towards the beginning of Lewis and Wigen’s book, I found the authors’ finding to be extremely accurate. To begin, our mistaken metageography comes from centuries of a Eurocentric perspective on the world. While Mark claimed this had nothing to do with racism, I disagree. The root of the Eurocentrism that literally drew the lines on our maps is centuries of racism and the belief that the white man is stronger, wiser, and more valuable than any other. If the conquerors and imperialists of the previous centuries had valued the cultures they come across equally, they could not have imposed their ideas or boundaries. Rather, because of the racism of the Europeans, cultures like the Bantu Kingdoms of the now Congo region that had a very organized and functioning way of life were wiped out and boundaries drawn around them that has led to decades of civil war.
ReplyDeleteLewis and Wigen take this mistaken metageography and offer a new view on the world and our current maps. They point out the mistaken groupings (such as East and West, North and South, First and Third World countries) and offer that regional grouping would help in aiding the misconception that come with our current groupings. While this is not completely flawless, it is slightly more accurate. Even Sub-Saharan Africa is more accurate than Africa because many of the problems in countries like the Congo are also familiar in other countries in the area (Rwanda, Uganda, etc.) This again though is still slightly flawed because clearly not all Sub-Saharan countries are torn by civil war currently, but it is definitely more accurate than the general “Africa.” The only real solution I see to this problem comes through how society chooses to pass on geography. As many of my classmates have said, maps and locations and continental groupings are very helpful in understanding where things are in the world, and I agree that these are very important in educating youth as they learn things much more easily in categories. However, I think geography, unlike many other fields we study further as we go further in education, tends to stop being learned at that point of categories. If education in geography were to continue and cultures and history of individual areas (with all different areas equally dwelled upon) I think much of our mistaken metageography would begin to fade. For example, it is clearly important to note that Haiti does not have a great economic situation, but to teach it as a “third-world country” limits its ability to become anything else because no one will accept growth from it. If we put slightly more emphasis on geography later in education though, the reasons for Haiti’s economic problems could be further discussed and explored so there would be a greater understanding of the problem rather than a simple label.
Observing the world, one cannot help but witness diversity. People share the one trait of humanity, but similarities terminate with that simple characteristic. If a person would travel around the planet, he or she would quickly discover the enormity of disparity between cultures. Yet, despite these differences, attempts arise to consort people into metageographical divisions. These attempts may suffice to provide an adequate system to refer to localities, but they tote many disadvantages that blind the views of people all throughout the world.
ReplyDeleteAs children, people ascertain knowledge of geographical divisions such as the continents or of other divisions that transcend geography, such as the Bible Belt. In all cases, children imbibe stereotypes or generalizations toward vastly varying groups of people, but since they learn what the textbooks print, the students believe that people in metageographical groups live the same type of life. By surmising the "jigsaw" of countries, as Lewis and Wigen denote the learning method, the children learn the perfect "places" and vague, general views of these countries. After delving into the cultural fabric of any area, one can observe the true diversity that occurs within these divisions. In Asia, billions of people subsist within arbitrary borders that divide the countries. However, since a conglomeration of billions of people predisposes itself to diversity, the continent binds disparate people who only share the commonality of ruling governments. Because of this aspect of metageography, often negative or untrue stereotypes and generalizations saturate the description of areas such as Asia. Viewed by outsiders, Asians are often categorized as the same, but in reality, the people living within these metageographical areas differ greatly based on culture, ideology, and countless characteristics. People often lump Asians into the same group despite different traits. In fact, the difference between such religions as Buddhism and Hinduism often escapes people, and the two become intertwined to foreigners. When a person observes an Asian-looking person, the observer often cannot distinguish the person's nationality and only know the person as "Asian." In a sense, viewing these areas as the other creates the apparition that they exist as the same, but in reality, the people differ just as greatly as one's self differs from another self living nearby.
(To be continued)
(...Continued)
ReplyDeleteIn the modern world, the ideas of metageography often create archaic references. In previous centuries, Americans would view India as a heathen country existing in the "Third World" or the" East." Present day, many people still possess this derogatory view that India lacks modernization and advancement, but the Indians possess the attitude, intelligence, and drive that has characterized developing countries for years. In the book The World is Flat by Thomas Friedmann, the issue of the global market place proves a worthy ground to disprove the ideas of metageography. A common stereotype is that Indians still live in ravished farming villages. While many subsist in this manner, millions live in modern cities and compete in the world market place for prestigious occupations. These people live in a country considered part of the "Third World" or the agricultural-driven "East;" yet as Friedmann articulates, they compete for careers with Americans. This liquidity and arbitrariness of borders, called "postmodernism" by Lewis and Wigen, confirms that metageography simply serves as a reference point. In reality, the people of "Third World" countries may appear underprivileged, but due to modernization and such advancements as the Internet, the borders that once guided views of industry, culture, and diverse peoples only rest as imaginary lines on a map. In reality, they mean nothing to the people who live within them. In a modern era, the advancement of technology has, as Friedmann says, "flattened the world." "Third World" countries now only carry the negative connotation because of archaic metageographical views. The idea of the "Third World" dies in a place such as India due to the international accessibility of modern technology.
Given all of these negative points, one positive point can arise within metageography. The continent system does provide a standardized dialogue. When speaking about the locality of an event, a person can discover the location from a description such as "Middle East" or "Afghanistan." Nevertheless, the positives end there. The practicality of the systems of categorization still warrant their usage when speaking about an area, but the overall generalizations only degrade disparate people and forget one major fact. Every person exists as a self; if two selves exist as the same, they would exist as one self, and since billions of people inhabit the planet, no two selves can ever exist in group as one.
The underlying purpose of all of the metageographic divisions has always been to separate the “prosperous,” “modern” world that we know from the supposedly “poverty-stricken,” “backwards” world that we are unfamiliar with. We developed the ideas of the “West”, “North,” “First World,” and “core” to congratulate ourselves on our superiority to the “East”, “South” “Third World,” and “periphery.” When we use these concepts there is always a value-judgment behind the words. First World and core carry a positive connotation while Third World and periphery carry a negative connotation. When we use these terms we are unwittingly reverting back to the imperialistic attitude that by our birth in America or Europe we are superior to people born into cultures dramatically different from our own. It is absurd to believe that the West has found the only way to prosperity and happiness. However, the ideas of the West and the First World have always included the concept that our culture should be spread throughout the world while other cultures should be repressed. In other words, the more “Western” a country, the more “prosperous” and “civilized” that country is perceived to be. The concepts of metageography were designed to spread the culture of Europe and the West while repressing and demonizing the cultures that were foreign to those in the First World.
ReplyDeleteDuring the European imperialistic period, European people and their political leaders were upfront about their racist views of people different from them. Everything that they perceived as different was automatically considered inferior. They developed the idea of the “West” to refer to the places that contained people very similar to them and everything that was too different was labeled the “East.” Their mania about the virtues of the West reached such a point that they began to believe that it was the “white man’s burden” to eliminate the cultures of the East and replace them with the far superior culture of the West. European governments encouraged the concept of the West’s superiority and then used it as justification for their takeover of nations in Asia and Africa. Political leaders gladly agreed to spread the “superior culture of the West” because in return they lined their own pockets and greatly increased the treasury of their respective countries. The concepts of the East and the West are dangerous to use today because their original intent was to convince people that it was the West’s right to spread its culture throughout the world. When we use the ideas of the West and the East today it still causes us to see the West in a positive light and the East in a negative light. We must avoid dividing the world this way because it causes us to fear and look down up cultures different than our own.
The First, Second, and Third World model was also developed for overtly political reasons. The Cold War was a fierce ideological war and new metageographic concepts were created as propaganda in that war. The USSR and the US never fought each other directly but they were always fighting for control of the newly named “Third World.”The First World (America and Europe) called the USSR and its allies the Second World to convince its citizens that communism was inherently inferior to democracy and the free market system. Who knows, the USSSR might have called itself the First World and NATO the Second World. However, what they both agreed on was that their systems of government were both better than whatever was going on in the Third World. Just like Europe in the imperialistic period, the United States and the USSR believed that they had a right and a duty to spread their superior culture, economy, and form of government to the rest of the world. Once again, the “developed” world showed a lack of respect for cultures that were significantly different from their own. The word “Third World” still implies extreme poverty. It still implies that that country needs outside help to survive. Even today, when we have stopped competing with the Soviet Union, we still believe we have a duty to interfere in the affairs of poor, un-democratic countries. We still believe we can impose our culture on other people. The concepts of the Third and First world are just a modern update on the idea of the “West and the rest.” They cause us to see the world as a superior “us” and an inferior “them.” The only way a Third world nation can move up to First World status is by becoming more like “us.” What a dull place the world would be if the entire world was exactly the same. Why in the world would we want to impose our cultures on other people unless we really considered our culture superior to all others?
ReplyDeleteThe metageographical concepts that we take for granted today were originally created for reasons that are racist and imperialistic. Even though we say we don’t believe in imperialism any more we still use words that were used as propaganda to advance the cause of imperialism. So when we say West or Third World we are unconsciously causing ourselves to see the world the way imperialistic Europe or the cold war U.S. did. Metageography undeniably makes it much easier to understand the world. However, most metageographic constructs are gross simplifications of the world which don’t resemble reality very well. It will make geography much harder but we must make a concerted effort to stop using these concepts if we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Nevin Peeples
ReplyDeleteEver since I was little, I have been fascinated with geography. While the topography of the various landscapes of the world has always interested me, what really attracted me to geography was the way it presented a world that is structured and organized. As a young boy, the world seems so confusing. Countless number of times I would find myself memorizing countries and their capitals on my globe, or flipping through my dad’s atlas just to better understand the world around me. Looking at maps and seeing how the world is organized helped me to better understand and feel more comfortable with the world around me. The categorical way geography organizes the complex parts of the universe into a simple structure that is easy to understand soothed my desire for order. Geography, in addition to other astrological and biological classifications, puts the complex jumble of the universe into simple categories, ranging from galaxies, solar systems, planets, continents, countries, nations, cities, towns, communities, families, organisms, organs, tissues, cells, organelles, compounds, all the way to atoms. Through this structure, the universe no longer seems chaotic.
However, as Martin W. Lewis’ and Karen E. Wigen’s book The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography points out, “It is precisely the most basic information…that is the most problematic” (1). In other words, while the concept of classifying the universe into discrete categorizes may seem like an easy way to understand the world around us, mapping the world as a whole is, in fact, always subjective. Quite often things, such as various world cultures, are thrown into certain categorizes of which they don’t belong, solely for the sake of convenience. Just as I experienced as a child, humans desire order and understanding, with the least amount of effort required to achieve it. The basis of geography, as well as other astrological and biological classifications, stems from this fundamental human desire. While the desire for order and understanding can be heroic, the problem arises with the amount of effort we are willing to give to get there. It is so easy to throw faulty labels on world cultures so that everything fits into nice, neat categories. But even despite how much effort we give, we can never truly make a flawless classification system. Lewis and Wigen’s proposal of dividing lands and cultures into world regions, while certainly a better system than before, also has its limitations, like any other classification system. Overcoming the problem of metageography requires that we realize the world is much more complicated than we want to believe it is. Unlike the young boy afraid to face this fact, we must embrace it. Otherwise we are not seeing the “real” world, but rather a fake version of it.
The world is more globalized than ever before. With almost no delay, one can carry on a conversation with a person literally on the opposite side of the globe. And yet, despite this complex and developed network of communication around the world, this passage by Lewis and Wigen shows how ignorant the average person still is about the different cultures of the world. I believe that despite our efforts of globalization, we are neglecting trying to actually understand those whom we are trying to unify. Too many people rely solely on the arbitrary borders which have been drawn over the years and fail to realize that even within each border there is a vast diversity of cultures.
ReplyDeleteRecently in my philosophy class we covered Plato’s outline of the path to knowledge, beginning with one having a false opinion. I learned that according to Plato, a key step which propels one in the direction of obtaining knowledge is the admission of ignorance. I believe that this applies greatly to our discussion of metageography, and I believe that this is exactly what Lewis and Wigem were getting at in the passage we read. There are many ways in which we could divide up the world, and while some ways may be better than others, I think it is important to realize that no manner of partitioning the globe would be fully adequate. However, I think the simple step of realizing these inadequacies is key if one wants to move on to try to understand the different cultures within these divisions. Furthermore, with over 6 billion people on Earth, I believe that it is impossible to truly understand all of the cultures of the world. Yet, this should not stop one from trying to understand all that one can about the many different societies across the globe. However, political boundaries should only be used as starting reference points, and one must realize that they must look more closely into these over-simplistic generalizations in order to even begin to realize the complexities of the societies across the globe.
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ReplyDeleteThis past January I spent four weeks in Yoro, a small town in Honduras. During this time, I lived with a Honduran family and worked at a nutrition center/orphanage for malnourished children. During this time I learned a lot, but I’d be the first to admit that I still have a very, very limited understanding of the Honduran culture. Not to mention, I realized that even in such a small country, the culture in the rural Yoro is much different than that in the city of San Pedro or the far west city of Copán. However, as a result of this experience, I have come to another big realization; namely, that the people of Yoro are really not that different from me. Though the circumstances in which we live are vastly different, our innate “humanness” was more or less the same. The young kids still desire to be held, the teenage boys still want to play soccer, most of the women still enjoy gossip, and after a hard week of work everyone still likes to party. I don’t mean to minimize the uniqueness of their culture, because it certainly is very unique in so many ways. However, I feel like I have spent so much of my life learning about and focusing on what makes other cultures different from my own that I have completely ignored how fundamentally similar we are in so many ways. In fact, in regard to metageography, I think one of the underlying principles behind dividing the map in the first place was this tendency to set the “others” apart from oneself. While I believe that borders are necessary as points of reference and to provide some sort of order and structure to different territories, they should not be relied upon to accurately set one culture apart from those that are different from it. Whether these borders be those of the current continents or nations or those of the sub-regions proposed by Lewis and Wigen, I believe that in order to really understand the “real” world we must first admit that any divisions we make are not perfect. We then must strive to understand what aspects of our own cultures are similar to those of the different cultures of the world, as opposed to simply focusing on what distinguishes these different cultures from our own.
Metageography is an important political tool that allows leaders to create a sense of “us versus them” in people. Historically, leaders since at least the time of Genghis Khan have realized that the best way to unite a disparate and conflicting group of people is to give them a common enemy to fight against. Politicians in the United States have used metageography recently to create a belief in the collective mind of the American public that the world is split into “pro-American” and “terrorist” with little gray area in between. Metageography is a tool that politicians use, often subconsciously, to invoke people’s fear of the unknown while advancing their own political agendas as the best defense against those “Other” ways of life.
ReplyDeleteAs a result of being used in this way, metageography has several unfortunate consequences. Most importantly, it blinds people to the fact that other countries from across the globe are just as rich in cultural diversity as the country they call home. For example, nearly every university student, by virtue of meeting students from all over the United States, can appreciate the fact that different regions of the country have unique foods, manners of speaking, and even manners of dressing (as one of my friends from Alabama is quick to point out, girls don’t show as much skin where he comes from). However, most university students would not be as quick to realize, if they were ever asked, that a country such as China, which has far greater landmass than the United States, also contains many diverse cultural regions within it. Speaking from my own experience, I did not even know that Islam had a presence in China at all, much less that there was a predominantly Islamic region in China until I read about it in one of my readings for this class. Metageography warps our sense of the world in this way by making us see the rest of the world as far less varied than our own place of inhabitance, making us see many foreign countries as homogenous when they really contain many diverse cultures. Although I will not make a conjecture as to how it could be done, freeing people from the snare of metageography would help promote understanding among the diverse cultures of the world.
It is an interesting proposition to suggest that an item as standardized and uniform as a map could represent and maintain some of the most overwhelming prejudices of society. Yet even though maps themselves cannot be blamed for ethnocentrism, for this is humanity’s inherent fault, they are, in form, an accumulation of ignorance over the ages. This ignorance paves way for a great irony of modern geography: while it is a subject aimed at opening the eyes of the public to the vast world around them, in more cases then not it stereotypes the true nature of other countries from its students, offering instead clouded, generalized view. While geographers definitely have a responsibility to fight against the common trend of grouping by continent, it must be recognized that the regionalist approach offered by Lewis and Wigens does not offer an instant or even short-term remedy; it is only a small seed of change planted in a vast sea of ethnocentrism and its consequences.
ReplyDeleteThe basis of the present generalized geography confronts modern society stems back to a very quintessential quality of humans themselves: their selfishness. All humans have the inherent tendency to address their own needs first, to relatively ignore the world around them when need exist in their own lives. It is why Eve picked the apple, why Judas defied Christ, and why modern geography is so generalized. The very foundations of the jingoist imperialism in15th Century Europe onwards existed in the transcendence of individual selfishness to a nationwide scale; thus, it is no surprise that after acquiring land the boundaries that were made were thrown together merely to aid the motherland in organization. In this way clashing ethnic groups were thrown together into a single country in Iraq and Sudan. The public had little interest in affairs other than their own, and such egocentrism gave citizens a contented mythical image of foreign lands, one that still exists today and is responsible for the simplistic generalization of entire continents, such as Asia, into a single stereotype. By doing this, even on smaller scales in areas such as Sudan, Lewis and Wigens argue is to “reduce the struggle currently being waged there to the status of a civil war—an internal affair that need not concern the global community to any great extent,” which in turn gives society an excuse to maintain its inward view. The boundaries on modern maps and the approach to group land into the largest category possible is not necessary a failure of geography, rather it is an accumulation of the general public’s overall desire to serve individual needs first while remaining comfortably aloof and ignorant from the vast diversity surrounding it.
By placing a stress on regions and exploring a separation between peoples by culture instead of landmass, Lewis and Wigens are definitely acting to improve the open-mindedness of modern society. Nevertheless, they are battling the consequences of centuries of ignorance and are attempting to counter the very foundations of human egotism. Even if the boundaries are changed in the near future, the conflicts that ill-thought boundaries created, such as the one in Sudan, would not be instantly solved. It is a problem that the so-called “superior” West created in the past, which has yielded consequences that humanity must to deal with today. While on the surface Lewis’s and Wigen’s plan offers a more extensive view on cultures, its more importantly confronts conflicts created by cultural ignorance; it offers people a chance to view the erroneous past and improve upon their inherent selfishness. This opportunity to view the other instead of just the self in context of past mistakes and in light of modern consequences is the key element in changing our perception of the real world. While abandoning inherent self-centered tendencies may be difficult and may take many years to yield progress, the regionalism provided by Lewis and Wigens is a small, yet active step in this direction.
Lewis and Wigen make an interesting and valid point when they argue that the cultural significance behind lines drawn by continents is nothing more than a myth. As they argue, there is not a cultural, geographical, or other specific, noteworthy difference when it comes to the two sides of a continental border. These qualities experience a gradation from one contiguous continent to another, which is not reflected accurately by the sharp black line drawn on a map. While it is certainly true that today’s belief that continental divisions also serve as anything more than the groups of land created by the Earth’s own plate tectonics, these divisions are certainly useful in many ways. Primarily, as there are only seven continents, they are easy to memorize and visualize. People, especially children, learning about the overall layout of the world, can identify such landmasses easily. However, this is not to say that people should look only at the lines of continents to divide such landmasses.
ReplyDeleteThe lines which define countries also serve as important divisions. Within each country is an individual government and group of citizens. Often, there is a distinct culture within these countries. The people within individual countries often speak the language of that country. Cultures, too, are often shared by the members of a certain country. The political unity of a country is likely the most defining and unifying feature of it. While the individual members may be all unique, they all are expected to abide by the laws of their own land and the will of the leaders of that land. Despite a myriad of differences in individual lives, they are united by one force.
Looking only to these lines to distinguish and define areas, though, is flawed in many of the same ways as looking at only continental lines. The different regions within a country hold extremely different groups of people. For example, the mammoth mass of China holds more people than any other country. Its sheer vastness makes variety in its people obvious. However, when people think about the stereotypical “Chinese person,” they picture in their minds an individual from Eastern China, completely ignoring the differences which certainly exist from region to region. This severe error, common to so many people in today’s world, should absolutely be amended.
These points point to the undeniable truth that what people see on a map and think is unerring is not quite so perfect. Many individuals take such maps at face value and, rather than look to common sense or consider curiosity, believe that since a country on a map is one flat color, the people within its borders must be similarly monochromatic. People usually fall short of what is necessary and fail to learn about countries’ individual regions. Like any group of people, a country cannot be defined perfectly in any set amount of words. Learning about each individual is the key to gaining understanding of the group as a whole.
Metageography’s most basic problem is finding a balance between precision and simplicity when constructing spatial structures. If we consider Lewis and Wigen’s belief that world regions is the answer, inherent problems reveal themselves. The world regions concept does not completely encompass the cultural, linguistic or religious aspects of each region. Additionally, if we are “In a country where high school graduates strain to locate Australia on a globe…,” would these same graduates be inclined to learn a more complex system?
ReplyDeleteIf using political boundaries is the best option when mapping an area, we must then contemplate this system’s weaknesses. Each political entity has its own views as to how much land they are entitled. For example, maps of India by Indian cartographers include parts of Kashmir; while maps of Pakistan by Pakistani cartographers would also include Kashmir. In the case of Israel and Palestine, both countries are still debating and fighting over what land belongs to which country. Mapping the world using the political boundaries has a logical premise, but this idea is heavily flawed.
Lewis and Wigen also state that “by continuing to employ Eurocentric concepts uncritically, scholars perpetuate a conception of the world that is both arrogant and faulty”. Essentially, metageography is the geography of power, focused only on those in power and the different political-geographical units they constructed. However, we should consider that a constructed spatial system is valid when the counties for which they were created use and therefore accept the system. For example, the people of India continued to keep the boundaries set up by the British even after the British left India. If the people of India had an issue with the structure they would have changed it, but because they did not, they validated the system.
It should also be noted that historically, cartography and metageography have been political tools. Those with the power are the ones who have been able to decide the borders and limits of their country and the importance of other less powerful countries. However, metageography is only a small piece of the problem, as history itself is a story about those who ended with the most power. When teaching about the myth of metageography, it must be considered that the geography of power is simply a symptom of the age old view that might is right. It is this deeper issue, this skewed version of history, that we, as a society, should focus on correcting.
It’s amazing how much maps have to do with our view of the world. Until reading The Myth of Continents, I’d never really considered it. I noticed too, that many of the issues mentioned can be related back to my own experiences, having grown up in Alaska. When I was little, I had a puzzle-map of the United States. To make it fit conveniently in a rectangle without including Canada, the makers simply shrunk Alaska to the relative size of Utah and stuck it in the bottom left hand corner by Hawaii, which they had enlarged and also moved. No wonder so many Americans don’t realize that Alaska is nearly two and a half times the size of Texas and over eighteen times the size of Indiana.
ReplyDeleteIf the maps of our own country are flawed, then maps of the rest of the world must be even worse. They don’t recognize cultural, linguistic, or religious differences within a nation-state or how those cultures are spread through out the region or even the world. The problem with potential maps based on any of these things, however, is the movement of people and ideas. Missionaries spread Christianity through out the world, creating Catholic Colombians, Mormon Samoans, and Orthodox Alaska Natives. But the culture of Bogota, Colombia is nothing like that of Rome; Pago Pago, Samoa has very little in common with Salt Lake City, and Kodiak, Alaska can in no way be compared to Moscow. There are so many nuances to culture that it is nearly impossible categorize them, especially as people move about the world as freely as they do today.
For the sake of political understanding, it is necessary that political boundaries are still taught in schools. But just as geographical maps are taught, so should linguistic and religious maps. Through typing this post, I’ve come to the conclusion that it really isn’t the maps that are the problem. We are never going to be able to accurately reflect the diversity of the world on a single 8.5x11 sheet of paper. The problem is how the idea of maps, people, culture, and the world are taught and interpreted. If the children are taught to appreciate the world’s diversity, they’ll be much less likely to stereotype as they grow. They realize that not everyone in within the orange lines are the same.
http://xkcd.com/503/
ReplyDeleteI have realized for quite some time that there is a fundamental flaw in any attempt to permanently define any concept. To borrow from Buddhist thought, all concepts are tulpas born of and borne by humanity, "living" entities that mutate, reproduce, and die over time as their use changes. The fundamental error with permanent definitions is the erroneous assumption that the concept described is in a state of permanence, whereas these concepts, be they mountains or definitions, change continuously, eroding and arising, gaining meaning and losing it. This, too, applies to the borders we set, albeit at different rates. Nevertheless, these definitions are useful if frequently updated, accurately stated, and commonly accepted. To eliminate the words "East", "Asia", and "Europe" would fundamentally cripple our understanding of the world.
For these concepts to be helpful, the basis for them must be contextually valid. If an economic determination is made with a geographic or political term, there is a fundamental error committed, and vice versa.
Perhaps the most troubling misuse of metageography is abuse for the good of an agenda; boundaries are drawn by those with power over the region described and the people informed of the boundaries, be it cultural, religious, political, or economical, where the actual inhabitants may have a completely different definition of their homeland (Australian schoolchildren, for instance, draw maps "upside-down" to the common North American perception of the world). Often, the boundaries serve to better control those within the boundaries. Labeling Sudan as one state gives the aggressors license to quell the "civil war". Removing Poland from the map rationalizes the conquest of that nation by its enemies. Calling the Dead Sea-area state Israel serves to suggest it to be the sole property of the "Israeli" (Israeli Jews and sympathizers) populace, and suggest that the "Palestinians" do not rightly belong there. But these labels do not change the underlying realities: Sudan is still two cultures embroiled in genocide, the Polish nation still existed, and the "Palestinians" (a group already defined by whom they are not) belong just as much as the "Israelis" and the other inhabitants, such as the non-Jewish, neutral denizens, who have as much, or sometimes more ancestry there as the other inhabitants of "Israel". Although simply labeling an area as one state serves to suggest one homogenous nation, this is rarely the case.
http://flourish.org/upsidedownmap/
On a lighter note, I was entertained by the core definition of "second-world" being a communist government. This clearly political definition for allegedly economic terminology is amusingly obvious, as is the suggestion that, as second, communism is inherently inferior to capitalism.
ReplyDeleteQuite unfortunately, misconceptions in our understanding of the human world will persist as long as there is some separation between people, be it linguistic, cultural, geographical, ecumenical, emotional, physical, or perceptual. The only conceivable way of overcoming this alterity would be the incorporation of the self into the other's existence, removing all separation to achieve a total connection. Note that the execution of this may pose some logistic problems, although this may be achieved to some extent by wandering through the world of the other, gaining an understanding of the other.
I do take issue with one point the authors repeatedly make: they argue that maps describing states with same-size pages is a horrible sin against a fair understanding of the world, yet it is simply the most practical solution to a problem - scaling the countries linearly would leave small countries as inconsequential blips on a blank page, placing large countries would divide up those nations in arbitrary grids, a logarithmic scale would just confuse the viewer, and the purpose of reference for scale is served by world maps.
All in all, the system we have is flawed, but repairable, and necessary to help understand the world. It must simply be well-updated, pertinent, and of limited bias.
Having read all of your comments, I can definitely agree with some of your feelings after reading the passage. The "China, Japan, same thing" issue particularly struck a chord with me, because I could hear myself saying at one time or another. Yes, I can admit that I am far from a geographical expert, let alone a metageographical one. I couldn't tell you what language they speak in Tibet, what types of food constitute ACTUAL Chinese food, or even if New Guinea bordered Guam. I haven't investigated it and frankly, at 18, I can live in a small, sectioned-off world. This issue about the differences between a geographical map and a map portraying accurate cultural groupings is really not a pressing one in my opinion for people in our positions. Plenty of people are ignorant about plenty of things and as long as they don't pretend to know about the world, misinformation won't be spread.
ReplyDeleteHowever, this could become a serious issue if ignorance about the world is carried into future generations of leaders -- people who can control boundaries, money, transport of goods, etc. Luckily, most people interested in politics take time to educate themselves about the map, assuming there is accurate, unbiased information available, (I really liked Adam's point about this -- even if everyone decided to look into "metageography," would there be quality information readily available?).
That being said, I would also like to note that I am not saying it is OK to be completely ignorant. I think knowing about the world around us is essential to being an intelligent, competent, and contributing citizen. I, myself, have hopes to learn about it firsthand when the time is right, and cannot advise on another way to appropriately educate the public. With the way geography is being taught in schools, though, it is apparent that anyone with real curiosity about the matter will need to investigate on their own time.