On the market "going south"

It turns out that there are lots of geography lessons, even in the reporting of the current economic crisis.

Over the last few days, stock markets all over the world have been on a losing trend and every other television reporter and commentator keeps referring to this as the market going “south.” And, without fail, I feel myself wanting to yell at the reporter to stop using “south” in this context.

My objection is not simply because “south” is one of the four cardinal directions along with east, west, and north. And my objection is not because the market indicators cannot move sideways—east or west—but can only go up or down, or remain unchanged.

I have trouble with the usage of “south” in the context of bad news because we keep reinforcing the notion, perhaps unintentionally, that “south” is bad and, therefore, “north” is good.

We don’t realize how much such connotations of north and south is ingrained in us until we begin to examine it. Pretty much every region in the world has its own version of the “northern superiority” over its southern neighbor.

Every once in a while I ask my freshman students whether there is any geographic pattern when it comes to the location of rich and advanced countries on a world map. Before long, the majority opinion is always that it is in the north that rich countries are located whereas all the poorer countries are in the south. When I push them for possible explanations, they can’t seem to resist the temptation that a northern location is just better.

After a few minutes of waiting for students to start questioning this framework, I present them with the first of my exhibits to challenge this assumption. When I ask them about Australia and New Zealand, I typically start seeing those light bulbs going on in them. They know that these countries way south of us are no economic basket-cases by any measure. We slowly then begin to reshape our assumptions about any innate virtues of the “north.”

And when I ask them where the richest and advanced countries of the day were located about a thousand or three thousand years ago, they begin to articulate an understanding that a northern location or a southern location does not necessarily make permanent a country’s economic fate. Being in the south is, therefore, no curse either. “Going south” then doesn’t carry the same connotations anymore.

Students get an opportunity to follow-up on this if ever they wander into my office and look up at the world map on the wall. It is a wonderful teaching and learning moment when I see in their eyes a little bit of confusion as they try to figure out why the map looks strange. It takes them only a few seconds to realize that it is an upside down map of the world—one that I purchased when we visited New Zealand.

Well, for all I know, maybe they leave the room feeling that they have just exited the Bizarro World of comics, where up is down, and left is right!

Perhaps it is the geographer in me that makes me write about this. Or, maybe because I grew up in a country that is located to the south of North America and Western Europe. In any case, the unfortunate aspect is that in characterizing misfortunes as “going south” we end up reinforcing an incorrect idea that somehow south is inferior.

I am not sure whether the television audience systematically, and strictly, treats “south” as a metaphor for a certain trend line and nothing else. (I hope I have not messed up with professional grammarians by referring to metaphors!)

Metaphors are powerful tools, particularly in rhetoric. Politicians use metaphors almost all the time because of the deep emotional response they can trigger. Some of the greatest orators, like Martin Luther King Jr. used metaphors that wonderfully blended together and helped convince the populace about the issues and ideas, and energized them into action. Most of us lesser mortals though tend to abuse metaphors.

So, while acknowledging that the economic indicators are “down”, here is to hoping that they will go “up” really soon and fast.