iMaax/flickr

One problem that modern cartographers cannot easily escape is

projecting a three-dimensional world on a flat surface. Every

solution to this problem distorts the face of the Earth in some

way. The most famous example is perhaps the Mercator

Projection, which flattens the polar regions and notoriously

inflates the sizes of Canada, Greenland and Antarctica. More

‘naturalistic’ alternatives include the Winkel III Projection, in

which distortions in direction, distance and area have been

minimized, and the Peters Projection, which now represents the

total area of the world’s countries most accurately. (The U.S.

National Geographic Society, by the way, adopted the Winkel III

as its preferred projection 1998.)

A Mercator projection

Wikimedia Commons

A Winkel III projection

Wikimedia Commons

A Peters Projection

Perno.com

Probably the most familiar of all contemporary world maps are the political ones, including this representative example from 2001. They invariably divide the globe into colored polygons that represent territorial states. As we discussed in yesterday’s lead article, students of critical geopolitics argue that representations of the world like this one – which emphasize territorial states to the exclusion of other actors – are a contributing factor to our collective failure to understand new transnational threats and respond to them effectively.

Political map of the world, 2001

Boston Public Library

One of the most influential and, yes, controversial representations of world geography that emerged in the uncertain political context immediately following the Cold War depicted Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis. As shown here, Huntington divided the world into eight major ‘civilizations’: Western, Slavic, Latin American, Islamic, African, Indic, Sinic, and Japonic. He famously argued that international cooperation would be more likely within the same civilization and conflict more likely at the ‘fault lines’ between civilizations.

Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”

Wikimedia Commons

Another famous representation of world geography appeared in George Orwell’s 1984, where three monolithic political blocs (or World Islands) perpetually warred against each other.

The Dystopian Geography of George Orwell’s 1984

Southern Cross University

Speaking of dystopia, here is a depiction of what the world might eventually look like after the melting of the polar ice caps. The submerged areas include some of the most densely populated and developed regions in the world: the Eastern seaboard of the United States, Northern Europe and Eastern China.

The earth following a polar ice melt

Kevin Gill/flickr

eaves.ca

Thomas Barnett’s “Core” and “Gap”

This map depicts Thomas Barnett’s geopolitical vision of a world with a prosperous, ‘progressive’ and politically integrated “core” and a comparatively undeveloped, deprived and politically disconnected “gap.” Integrating the gap as much as possible with the core is the ultimate objective in this classically informed view of geopolitics.

A complementary, less either/or depiction of Barnett’s core and gap construct appears here. The picture contrasts the illuminated (e.g., more developed) areas in the Global North with the large swathes of South America, Africa, and Central Asia that remain in darkness.

NASA

The Earth at Night

And yet another variation on Barnett’s construct, although this one is more stark than his map. The red dots are the locations of Flickr pictures, the blue dots are the locations of Twitter tweets, and the white dots are locations that have been posted to both. Basically, the last three slides show that the core-gap construct is actually uneven when it comes to different forms of development.

Eric Fischer/flickr

World map of activity on Flickr and Twitter

Represented here – by way of a cartogram – is the world based on military spending. (In this case, the spending includes the costs of military personnel, including recruitment and training, supplies, weapons and equipment, and construction.) Since military spending is often used as a proxy for a state’s ‘hard power,’ does this map and the next one approximate a genuinely ‘neo-realist’ picture of the world?

Worldmapper

The World, Based on Military Spending – A Neo-Realist View?

Arms exports

Arms imports

Worldmapper

The global arms trade

1 AD 1500 AD

1960 AD 2015 AD

This series of cartograms illustrates the national incomes of different parts of the world in the years specified. Evidence of the ‘great divergence’ can be seen between 1500 and 1960, but are we now seeing a great re-convergence?

Worldmapper

Armed Forces Journal

An Alternative Middle East?

Much like the three previous maps, this one goes to the heart of critical geopolitical critiques on the opportunities and dangers of geospatial representation. It shows what the Middle East theoretically could look like if the region’s political borders, drawn by geometrically-minded 19th and early 20th century colonialists, actually reflected its ethnic and religious realities. Maps such as these are often highly controversial and politically charged, especially in the eyes of those who want to maintain various forms of the status quo. By showing that representation can treat political “reality” in different ways, maps such as these are not politically neutral, at least in the eyes of those who harbor, believe in, and promote alternative forms of representation that reject cartographic experiments such as this one.

An Alternative Middle East?

There is no shortage of maps showing alternative future representations of North America. One of the most famous is Joel Garreau' s the Nine Nations of North America (1981)

Wikimedia Commons

An Alternative North America?

For more than a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the breakup of the United States. Economic and moral collapse, he argues (or is that hopes?), will trigger civil war, which will be the invitation for foreign powers (including Canada and Mexico) to cut the country up into six pieces. This map depicts the envisioned results.

The Wallstreet Journal

An Alternative United States?

Boston Public Library

The world according to Standard Oil, 1940

Lest we forget, geospatial representations are not the sole domain of official or quasi-official bodies. Non-government and private actors have their own highly subjective view of the world too, and they might not be particularly recent either.

As noted in yesterday’s lead article: “Because the geography of the world is too vast and complex to grasp all at once, representations of geography – rather than geography itself – are what actually shape a state’s foreign policy, or so students of critical geopolitics argue. These representations, in turn, inevitably distort or obscure what they represent, which make it critically important to pay close attention to this process. Indeed, the requirement is not only to prevent these distortions from misleading us about what policies to pursue in practice, but also to make explicit moral or aesthetic choices about how exactly to represent geography ourselves.”On an unrelated note: this Chinese map from the mid 19th century is a map of the world. If you look carefully, you can make out Europe and the United States – squeezed into the top-left corner

Boston Public Library

Critical Geopolitics – A Closing Reminder