Maps: A line in the sand. Or, on the rocks. Or, in the waters.

I suppose we humans have been fighting over stuff even from our ape years.  Despite that long track record of beating the crap out of others, and despite the likes of Steve Pinker trying to convince me that we fight and kill less than ever before, I can't help but wonder at the extent to which we continue to duke it out.

The latest exhibit: a "paper fight" of sorts.

The paper happens to be passports.

It appears that China is hell bent on asserting its territorial rights over land and sea.  In the latest iteration, the country has apparently been issuing passports with maps that have ticked off quite a few of its neighbors.

China has enraged its neighbours by claiming ownership of the entire South China Sea and Taiwan on a map printed in its newly revised passports.
Inside the documents, an outline of China printed in the upper left corner includes Taiwan and the sea, hemmed in by dashes. The change highlights China's longstanding claim to the South China Sea in its entirety, though parts of the waters also are claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia.
China's official maps have long included Taiwan and the South China Sea as its territory, but reproducing this on passports could be seen as a provocation since it requires other countries to tacitly endorse the claims by affixing their official seals to the documents.

Smooth!  Every visa stamped on those passport pages is an affirmation of the maps too. Brilliant mandarins!

Well, if only the others were born suckers, right?

The Indian embassy in Beijing is said to have retaliated by stamping Chinese visas with a map of their own which shows the territories in India.
Several of China's neighbours have also protested against the new map.
Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan have all objected because it shows disputed islands in the South China Sea and Taiwan to be a part of China.
They have described the new design as a violation of their sovereignty. 

Vietnam is playing defense against this paper offense:

Chinese state media reported Saturday that Vietnam was refusing to stamp the passports, instead admitting Chinese visitors whose passports show the map by stamping a separate piece of paper.

 India, which fought a losing war in 1962 against China has gone into a tit-for-tat approach:

After the practice was discovered three to four weeks ago, India mulled over the issue for some time and decided the best response would be to issue visa stickers stamped with a map ``as we know it'', said an official, which means including Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh.  

All because of the unresolved territorial disputes with India:

In New Delhi, China is viewed with suspicion as a longtime ally and weapons supplier to Pakistan, India’s bitter rival. For Beijing, the presence in India of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and 120,000 other exiles from Tibet remains a source of tension.
India says China controls 41,440 square kilometers (16,000 square miles) of its territory in Aksai Chin in Kashmir, while Beijing claims that the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which shares a 1,050-kilometer (650-mile) border with the Chinese-run region of Tibet, is rightfully Chinese territory.

The Economist notes from India's border state of Arunachal Pradesh:

Back in the Tawang valley, Dorjee Khandu Thongdok, a jovial politician, campaigns to raise awareness over the “agony and sufferings during the Chinese aggression” of 1962. Munching on roasted sweetcorn just harvested from nearby fields, he has no trust in talks with China. A military solution is certainly no answer, he insists. But he would, he says, not be surprised if the Chinese again invade Arunachal, just as they did half a century ago. The task of both Indian and Chinese leaders is to ensure that he is wrong.

Time for a Hollywood take on "the Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming"

Mapping stereotypes: Europe according to the US

The site has quite a few maps that caricature the "geography of prejudice" (ht)

Why maps and geography matter?

Here is yet another reason.  From, ahem, another guy with an Indian connection :)
One of the many impressive skill-sets he has: "speaks German, Hindi, French, Spanish, and basic Arabic." 

NCAA Basketball, geography, and ESPN

When the Green Bay Packers started winning a few years ago, I recall chatting with a few people who were all pumped up about the team and their quarterback, but had no idea about the location of Green Bay itself.  It simply did not matter to them.  This indifference to location, even while fanatical about the economic and recreational activity related to that location, fascinated me.  Since then, every once in a while I have quizzed students on the locational aspects of winning sports teams--football, baseball, and basketball.  The results were always the same: even the most interested and serious sports fan was geographically-challenged about the very team he (almost always a "he") was rooting for.

A couple of years ago, I wrote in an essay that:

It appears that only real estate agents and geographers understand the importance of location, location, and location. Otherwise, I suppose both within and outside academia, there are not many who develop a spatial understanding even of the issues that interest them or the cities where they live.

I wonder if we geographers might be partly at fault because we tend to equate maps with the “old school geography” that impressed upon people an (incorrect) idea of geography that it is only about memorizing facts about places. But in getting away from that atrocious caricature of geography, we might have gone to the other extreme where we, too, might be reinforcing the notion that it is not important to understand the actual location of a place, and its relationship with its surroundings.

Students in my introductory class were not completely off the hook though. Given the notoriety of the New England Patriots, I asked them at the final meeting of the term, as a way of wrapping up the course, where New England is and the name of the city where the Patriots play. I had hoped that at least five out of the forty students would know the correct answer.  Only one knew that the team’s home is in Foxborough, though four others had a good enough answer of Boston.  I suppose I did get that five out of forty I was shooting for.☺

Thus, you can then understand why I am excited about the online geography quiz that ESPN has about the NCAA men's basketball tournament teams.
So, hey you sports nuts out there, who filled out the brackets (including the President!) take that quiz and see how well you know the locations of those universities...

BTW, speaking of the President and his bracket, here is the Daily Show commenting on it towards the end of this hilarious segment :)

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Map of the day ... a puzzle as well

What does the world look like?

Could it be true that that only a few, other than real estate agents and geographers, understand the importance of location, location, and location?

I asked the students in one of my classes whether they considered Iraq and Iran as important enough for Americans to know more about. There was no hesitation—students unanimously, and loudly, voiced their affirmatives. The party-pooper that I am, I interrupted their enthusiastic comments by handing out blank outline maps of the Middle East and directed them to identify as many countries as they possibly could. Given how much Iraq has been dominating our lives, I was sure that a majority of the class would at least identify that country. Of course, the blank map included Iran and Afghanistan as well, which are equally newsworthy.

Well, it turns out that the familiarity that the class had about Iraq, Iran, and Saddam Hussein did not lead to a spatial understanding of that part of the world. Class discussions suggested that the actual location of Iraq or Iran did not matter to them. Iraq may as well be on Mars then?

After pointing out the countries, at the end of the exercise, I directed them to look at Sudan and Ethiopia. As they kept staring at the countries on the map, perhaps for the first time in their lives, it became apparent to them that it is a relatively narrow body of water, the Red Sea, which separates these countries from a larger contiguous land area that we refer to as the Middle East. For all purposes, Sudan and Ethiopia are, hence, only a metaphorical stone’s throw away from Saudi Arabia, and yet Ethiopia is imagined as a poor country in a remote part of Africa.

Of course, geography is not about memorizing maps, or random and trivial facts about places. It is about understanding relationships—such as economic or political relationships—between and amongst geographic areas. Such a framework, though, begins with knowing the actual location of a place, and its relationship with its surroundings. After all, if we didn’t know where exactly Ethiopia is, would we really be able to understand why that country seems to have so many problems, and how those spill over to neighboring Eritrea, for instance?

The fantastic and fortunate contrast to the disinterest in understanding locations is this: we live in a world in which information is freely and easily accessible. News media often include maps of countries in their reports. A simple Google search brings up detailed maps of practically any area of the world. This ease of obtaining information is all the more the reason educators like me want our students, and the general populace, to understand and appreciate the world.

Information was not so readily available sixty years ago. Which is why I find it simply remarkable how President Franklin Roosevelt emphasized the spatial understanding of the world, when the country was in the midst of one of the bloodiest wars. The author and public intellectual, Susan Jacoby, noted an interesting aspect of Roosevelt’s “fireside chats”—he urged Americans to buy maps of the world and then follow along with him details of the World War II battles that he “chatted” about in his radio addresses—with specific references to the geographic areas.

Roosevelt may have had in mind what a student in my class articulated in her assignment after the class exercise. She wrote: “One thing that stood out to me this week was …. I find that I get so caught up in these abstract, revolutionary concepts of how the world should be better without ever even taking into account what the world actually looks like.”

By urging Americans to look at the maps of the theatres of war, Roosevelt was making sure that his fellow citizens knew what the world looked like, even as America was playing a crucial role in reshaping it. I guess Roosevelt was a geography teacher-in-chief, while he was successfully carrying out his responsibilities as the commander-in-chief.

In the contemporary world, too, America is actively engaged in the international arena. To play a constructive role, we citizens need to be informed enough in order to be able to convey to elected leaders the changes we would like to make. A spatial understanding of the world is, therefore, essential to carry out civic responsibilities. Add a world atlas to your summer reading list.

Unemployment, geography, and maps

A follow-up to this post on why geography matters, particularly when it comes to issues like unemployment.

Chris Wilson at Slate has an awesome county-by-county mapping of unemployment, and over time since 2007. You will see how the slowly blue (jobs gained) changes to red (jobs lost). It is almost like the spread of infection, from Michigan. No, I am not saying that Michigan triggered job losses. Not at all. But, if one did not know what the data were, then that reader might think something started in Michigan and spread everywhere ..... Wilson writes:

A map of employment gains or losses by county tells the story of how those job losses first struck in the most vulnerable regions and then spread rapidly to the rest of the country. As early as August 2007, for example—several months before the recession officially began—jobs were already on the decline in southwest Florida; Orange County, Calif.; much of New Jersey; and Detroit, while other areas of the country remained on the uptick.

Mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a map :-)

Yes, the title is a take-off on the wonderful song and dance number from "The Fiddler on the Roof". But, this blog entry itself has nothing to do with that musical. It is, instead, about how easy it has become to create maps--so much so that bad maps with bad data and analysis probably are driving out good maps with good data and analysis. At least that is one worry. I think that even if that were the case, well, there is nothing we can do!
Here is an excerpt from an article in the Globe and Mail:

Much of the story of map-making over the past five years centres on the rise of amateurs such as Mr. Ajmani. Using powerful online mapping tools, they are redefining the millenniums-old field of cartography, earning both critics and admirers in the process.
Their products are not maps in the traditional sense, but mash-ups, which combine traditional charts - hosted by mammoth tech companies such as Google and Microsoft - with some unusual spatial data: UFO sightings, public toilet locations or the whereabouts of England's worst potholes, to name a few.
"We call it the democratization of spatial data," said Sally Hermansen, senior instructor in the University of British Columbia's department of geography. "They are redefining how we think about the world, how we organize the world." ....
Several years ago, such map-making powers were limited to relatively few
cartographers and geographers with years of training.
"Map-making used to be a real top-down process," said Jeremy Crampton, associate professor in the department of geosciences at Georgia State University. "Now, anybody in their spare time can contemplate making a simple map."

More power to the people, eh!