The Politics of Cartography
By Scott Minebrook, US News & World Report

All maps distort reality.  Flattening a spherical world without misrepresenting some part of it is simply not possible.  Map makers have long appreciated this fundamental paradox of cartography, but in recent years the distortions in maps have become increasingly political.

The political debate centers mostly on a 400-year-old map, the Mercator projection, the image of the world most familiar to American schoolchildren.  Originally designed as a navigational tool, it still works fine for that purpose, but it gets the relative size of land masses dead wrong.

Such distortions are of more than passing significance, critics of the Mercator insist, because “mental maps” are crucial to cultural perceptions.  In our society, we unconsciously equate size with power and if developing countries are misrepresented, they are likely to be valued less.  The most provocative challenger to the Mercator is the over 25-year-old Peters projection map, named after its creator, German historian and cartographer, Arno Peters.  The Peters map is an “equal area” projection that claims to represent relative sizes of land masses more accurately.  Peters has bitterly denounced the “European arrogance” of the Mercator map, saying that the cartographic profession has intentionally used it to foster European imperialist attitudes.

The schools too are yielding to the tide of cartographic political correctness.  More and more are using the Peters map not only to raise consciousness about the inevitability of map distortions but also to counter the strong European emphasis of the Mercator and other maps.  In Paramus, N.J., educators are using the Peters projection with other maps to get students to look at the world differently.

It is human nature for map makers to put their own interests at the center of the world and keep what is foreign peripheral.  The enthusiastic reception that the Peters map is currently receiving suggests that developing country’s point of view is , if nothing else, politically fashionable.

(article condensed by Jim Homan)