GRAPHICS: Nothing is where you think it is: Maps and Social Equality. » The Wanderlust Files

Nothing is where you think it is:

Maps and Social Equality.

Wow, Mother Earth. Isn’t she beautiful?  This is the iconic image of our beautiful round earth, flattened  for maps to hang in classroom walls all over the world. It’s too bad that widely used reference is grossly misleading and shares responsibility for social bias against large regions with people of color.

Mercator projection: projecting imperialism, ethnocentrism, and colonialist mentality for centuries.

 

The unavoidable problem with ALL maps of the Earth, which is round (although some still feel differently), cannot be represented on a flat surface without sacrificing some combination of size, shape, proportions, or distances of the land masses and bodies of water.

The Mercator Projection was designed in 1569 as an aide to navigate European sailors.  It emphasizes shape at the expense of size, distance and proportion.

However, there have been many other projections made since then, many with a major emphasis on correcting the the land size bias also known as “The Greenland Problem”.  On the Mercator projection, Greenland looks close in size to Africa, but in reality Africa is 14 times larger then Greenland.  Equal Area Projections correct this problem.  One of my favorites amongst them is the Gall-Peters Equal Area Projection:

Peter's Projection: "all areas, both land and water, are of relatively proportional size: one square inch anywhere on the map represents 158,000 square miles on the Earth’s surface."

This excerpt from ODT Maps explains further problems with Mercator maps:

The Mercator projection creates increasing distortions of size as you move away from the equator. As you get closer to the poles the distortion becomes severe. Cartographers refer to the inability to compare size on a Mercator projection as “the Greenland Problem.” Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, yet Africa’s land mass is actually fourteen times larger (see figure below right). Because the Mercator distorts size so much at the poles it is common to crop Antarctica off the map. This practice results in the Northern Hemisphere appearing much larger than it really is. Typically, the cropping technique results in a map showing the equator about 60% of the way down the map, diminishing the size and importance of the developing countries.

This was  convenient, psychologically and practically, through the eras of colonial domination when most of the world powers were European. It suited them to maintain an image of the world with Europe at the  center and looking much larger than it really was. Was this conscious or deliberate? Probably not, as most map users probably never realized the Eurocentric bias inherent in their world view. When there are so many other projections to chose from, why is it that today the Mercator projection is still such a widely recognized image used to represent the globe? The answer may be simply convention or habit. The inertia of habit is a powerful force.

A different type of projection is an “Equal-Area” projection. This shows sizes in proportion while sacrificing true shape. The Peters Projection is one type of equal area map. Is it the only one? No, there are hundreds of others, but only a handful of others are in common use. The Mollweide projection, developed in 1805, is commonly used for displaying distributions (people, telecommunications equipment, the world’s religions, etc). Karl B. Mollweide (1774-1825) specifically sought to improve upon the weaknesses of the Mercator  projection. The Eckert IV is another equal area projection developed in the 1920′s by Max Eckert (1868-1938). This has the advantage of less shape distortion near the equator and the poles. A fourth equal-area map is Goode’s Homolosine created in 1921 by J. Paul Goode (1862-1932). This interrupted map looks like an orange peel (see figure below) and has less shape distortion than the other equal area maps.  Read the rest HERE

Here is another favorite map projection or the “Orange Peel” projection which retains accurate size, shape and direction by putting the spatial errors in the “interrupted areas” in the ocean:

Goode Homolosine Projection

The map debate is a lively one. In my educational work, I prefer to use the Peters Projection. The stark contrast to the status-quo image of the Mercator map allows for instant discussion and teachable moments in the areas of  Eurocentric socialization and conditioning,  as well as the power of propaganda through science.  Of course the most accurate map is not a map at all, but a globe.

 

Great links on mapping and correcting world views:

 

 

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