Maps and Politics

Abstract

Reviewed by: Maps and Politics* Josef W. Konvitz (bio) Maps and Politics. By Jeremy Black. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. 188; illustrations, maps, notes/references, index. $35. This book should be of interest to historians of technology for its treatment of objectivity and ideology as factors shaping the content of maps. Maps are artifacts produced within the limits of several technologies, ranging from geodesy to printing. How they are produced, and by whom, are not questions of concern to Jeremy Black, whose attention is instead focused on the thorny problem of the map as a representation of reality in space. The [End Page 650] interpretation or understanding of maps involves graphic communication, which in many respects differs significantly from written exposition. Maps are most often freestanding, without background material that permits the identification of methodological or interpretive bias. Because most map users are not really trained in visual or graphic communication, they may not be aware of how easily maps can deceive, distort, or misrepresent. Black’s book has the merit of exploring the nature of modern maps from this perspective in relation to political ideas and uses. This necessarily involves a discussion of how objective information can be differentiated from the subjective within the confines of the same map or map genre. Written for the nonspecialist, Maps and Politics begins with an overview of the debate among historians of cartography concerning the reliability of maps and their use to support existing power structures. Black handles the issues concisely and clearly, indicating his own intermediary position, which accepts the fact that the mapping conventions of western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have become the dominant modes for describing space worldwide. (Given the bibliographic character of the notes, the first chapter can be read as freestanding introduction to this debate). The question of minority and Third World views of space and of maps does not disappear at this point, however; the presumed limitations of Eurocentricity in maps remains a subtheme in subsequent chapters covering projections and boundaries, social and economic thematic mapping, and international relations and war. Throughout, Black makes valuable observations that will sharpen the ability of any generalist to think critically and more questioningly about what can and cannot be mapped. By raising questions about subjectivity and objectivity in relation to maps and politics, Black tries to relate concerns for social and contextual analysis more closely to the traditional themes of politics. In so doing, however, he tells us more about how maps were used to expand the hegemonic power of nation-states than about principles or ideas of politics. The spatial implications of different political ideologies, their relationship to principles of social order and cultural identity, and their cartographic expression are subjects too vast, and too much in need of separate study, to find their full articulation in this book. The importance of this issue for Black (and for this reviewer) lies in an effort to take politics more seriously. The primacy of politics in human thought and action needed no explanation in the ancien regime and in the nineteenth century. Politics, meaning the ends as well as the means of social and economic life, split conservatives from liberals over the degree to which social structure limited the possibility of progressive reform, and thus the degree to which social change would be a positive or negative consequence of politics. Social and economic thinking have advanced greatly in the twentieth century, in part to help control and direct the trends and events that weakened democracy and contributed to the rise of fascism and to the appeal [End Page 651] of communism. It is also the case that cynicism about politics has intensified in recent years. Whatever the reasons, political issues are no longer as important as they once were, the social agenda in intellectual circles having pushed much else aside. (The understanding of economic issues by humanists and the public still has a long way to go.) Those who assume that the world is socially constructed may reach the conclusion that political ideas have only a limited capacity to convey truth. But, to paraphrase Kranzberg’s law, politics is not neutral. Because things are often...