American Geographical Society Research Articles

Decoding the Images of the Polish Countryside, by Louise Arner Boyd (1887-1972)

This article looks at the photographic legacy of Louise Arner Boyd’s (1887-1972) expedition through the Second Polish Republic in the context of her discovery of the otherness and social diversity of the country she visited in 1934. The authors were particularly captivated by the portrayal of the Ruthenians/Ukrainians of what is now Western Ukraine, as depicted in the Boyd photography. The authors focus lies on the unprocessed photographic content from the library collections of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the book she published a few years after her journey with the cooperation of the American Geographical Society in New York. The authors told the story of Louise A. Boyd’s trip to Poland primarily to introduce the reader to the context of the creation of the photographic collection, in which authors try to discover content and meanings that have not been sought before. Their analysis of the making-off process and reception into academia for Boyd’s book entitled Polish Countryside is also crucial to understanding that it is only a part of the collection. It is a specific vision and a compromise between the photographer’s and the publisher’s expectations. The Boyd photographic collection focused on rural landscapes and the architecture of villages and farms, capturing various farming methods, road and water transport scenes, village types and traditional clothing. With meticulous descriptions and detailed lists of the photographed locations and subjects, the collection serves as valuable documentation of building styles and techniques, traditional costumes, transportation, markets and agricultural and fishing practices. Thanks to Boyd’s skilled photographer’s eye, she was able to capture visually attractive photographs that also serve as scientifically intriguing documents of a bygone era. The significance of these photos extends beyond the confines of ethnography, as we have endeavoured to emphasise in this article. Through reinterpreting Ruthenians/ Ukrainians portraits in Boyd photographs after almost a century, we aim to grasp the preserved and concealed contexts, thereby reconstructing, if not the complete image, at least its distinct components. However, the images of contemporary Western Ukraine and its inhabitants by Louise Arner Boyd that the authors analysed are currently in the photography collection mentioned above from the UWM as part of the digitalised archive of the American Geographical Society. The authors had attempted to look at them both as an example of ethnographic photography typical of the interwar period and a unique image of a world that no longer exists. In the authors’ opinion, Louise A. Boyd’s photograms, placed as raw ethnographic material in the mentioned repository of the UWM library, today have the value that she wanted to give them from the beginning when she was considering the publication of Polish Countrysides, and they are a reminder of a world whose traces have almost disappeared today.

The Ethics of Location Tracking During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond: Building Awareness and Consensus

This article highlights the relatively limited but growing discussion surrounding ethical guidelines for the use of location tracking technology. After a review of recent literature related to location data and geoprivacy, this article is divided into two sections: The first highlights views of public officials and location tracking experts over the potential misuse of location data, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data come from available transcripts of the Location Tech Task Force organized in 2020 by the American Geographical Society as part of its EthicalGEO initiative. The second section documents various institutional approaches to elevate the dialogue and inform governance of location-based data and technology, including the development of the Locus Charter, an emerging international framework on the ethical use of location data. In conclusion, we urge the professional and academic geographic communities to engage with the elaboration and dissemination of ethical frameworks to guide the use and management of data from location tracking technology.

Centering DEI in Cartographic and Primary Source Literacy Instruction

Providing primary source information literacy instruction is one of the main goals at the American Geographical Society Library (AGSL) on the campus of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), where we host visits from classes in a broad range of disciplines each semester. The AGSL’s collections have a long history that is the product of colonialism, patriarchy, racism, and other issues. The class visits to the AGSL are an excellent opportunity to highlight the collection and to teach students to think critically about primary source materials. In line with the values of the AGSL staff and the UWM Library’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, staff decided it was time to reframe the way the AGSL approaches information literacy instruction. The Public Services Librarian developed a primary source literacy and cartographic literacy program where students begin to teach themselves through the use of guided questionnaires and group discussions prompting the students to think critically about cartographic resources. This article will describe the AGSL’s approach to cartographic and primary literacy source instruction with classes in multiple disciplines and in both undergraduate and graduate levels.

CARLOTTA JOAQUINA MAURY: UMA VIDA DEDICADA À CIÊNCIA

This article is a remote teaching activity within de PET-Geology Group (UFPA) and presents a summary of Carlotta Joaquina Maury’s academic professional career and their scientific contribution to the pioneering studies of the Pirabas Formation. Carlotta Joaquina Maury (1874-1938), who was recognized as the first woman to work with paleontology in Brazil. Despite all adversities she was a consulting paleontologist and stratigrapher to Royal Dutch Shell’s Venezuela Division and one of the official paleontologists the Geological and Mineralogical Service of Brazil. In 1925, she published “Tertiary Fossils from Brazil with Description News Cretacean Forms” where she described numerous species of mollusks from the northeastern coast of Brazil, performing the stratigraphic correlation of these faunas with similar faunas of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Carlotta Joaquina Maury was fellow of the Geological Society of America, American Geographical Society and of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. An admirable woman ahead of her time. Keywords: Paleontologist, Scientific women, Pirabas Formation.

David Lowenthal, 1923-2018, renowned academic and public intellectual

ABSTRACT Belonging to a family of lawyers and professors, polymath David Lowenthal hated disciplinary divisions. American by birth but British by inclination, he learned the practice of geography through wartime service in Western Europe. During a long and highly productive career, spent mainly at the American Geographical Society and then at University College London, he made important contributions to Caribbean studies, environmental history, landscape interpretation, and cultural and historical geography. His later work on heritage informs management agencies across the globe. The ideas of pioneer environmentalist George Perkins March formed an essential touchstone for many aspects of his writing. In addition to scholarly articles and books (notably The Past is a Foreign Country), Lowenthal produced controversial essays aimed at a wider audience. His impact in the public realm was arguably as great as that among academics.

Contextualizing Map and Geography Library Collections as FAIR Research Data: A Case Study of Historical Landscape Photographs

Collection management techniques used in map and geography libraries to describe and provide access to materials ensure researchers can engage with collections as viable sources of research data. Many practitioners create frameworks to market these collections as potential sources of data, whether used alone or alongside other research data. These frameworks bear similarities to the FAIR data movement, where data producers are encouraged to make their data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. I frame the historical landscape photograph collections of the American Geographical Society Library and the United States Geological Survey Library as FAIR research data, offering the potential to engage with trends, concerns, or concepts being explored by geographers. When highlighting the FAIRness of these collections, we have an opportunity to better understand how they may be used as standalone sources of data, as well as alongside other FAIR data sources in scientific research. As another FAIR data source, I use the DataONE Data Catalog to contextualize these photographs alongside present-day datasets from fieldwork in similar landscapes. I encourage map and geography libraries to understand how the FAIRness of their collections enable unique research opportunities, leveraging the momentum surrounding FAIR research data in open science/open research communities.

Professor David Lowenthal, 1923–2018

Professor David Lowenthal, 1923–2018

Esmond Bradley Martin, 1941–2018

Esmond Bradley Martin (17 April 1941 to 4 February 2018) was an American geographer who, through extensive fieldwork in Asia, was an authority on the traditional uses of rhino products. He carried out pioneering work from the 1970s investigating the illegal rhino horn and ivory markets to help close them down and save rhinos and elephants. He had been the United Nations Special Envoy for Rhinos in the early 1990s and, in the 2000s, he worked in dangerous markets surveying endangered wildlife commodities for sale. His work helped China ban their domestic rhino horn trade in 1993 and their ivory trade in 2017. Esmond was essentially an optimist, believing that with committed leadership, proper law enforcement and effective management, wild populations of rhinos, elephants and other species could flourish in their natural habitat in Africa and Asia. Born in New York City, Esmond had the most enquiring and persistent mind, always questioning well informed people. His interests ranged from opera, 18th century French furniture and paintings, to travelling and learning about different cultures and demand for endangered animals. From Brooks School in Massachusetts, he went to the University of Arizona receiving a BSc in Agricultural Economics in 1964 followed by an MA for his thesis “The rural land use of Kenya.” In 1971 he completed his PhD in Geography at the University of Liverpool on “The development of Malindi from the Portuguese period to the present.” While in England he collected Africana, enjoying visits to Maggs and other antiquarian bookshops, absorbed by the writings of early explorers in Africa, particularly admiring Burton. He had first been to Africa when he was 18 with his brother on a hunting safari to the Congo, which gave him his initial taste of adventure in Africa. In 1972 he and his wife Chryssee made Kenya their home, living near Nairobi National Park in Langata where he was to be tragically murdered 46 years later. The dhow trade was his first passion, exploring many of the Indian Ocean ports. He wrote Cargoes of the East: The ports, trade and culture of the Arabian Seas and West Indian Ocean in 1978 (reprinted in 2008) and Zanzibar: Tradition and revolution in 1978 (reprinted in 1992 and 2007). From this, he learned about huge quantities of rhino horn smuggled from Africa into North Yemen to make into handles for traditional daggers (jambiyas). The Saudi Arabian oil boom brought wealth to many in North Yemen in the 1970s. This was at a time of civil wars, corruption and mismanagement in much of Africa where rhinos were slaughtered and wiped out from much of their range to meet this demand. He worked tirelessly to close down this market. From 1971 to 1991 Esmond investigated the international trade in rhino products in Africa and Asia. His position as Special Envoy for rhinos for the United Nations Environment Programme in 1992 and 1993 helped to curb the poaching crisis and illegal trade in rhino horn at that time. From the late 1990s he investigated the world's ivory markets, supported mainly by Save the Elephants, and continued to monitor the rhino horn trade for the Aspinall Foundation. His final fieldwork was in Myanmar in December 2017. Esmond's main publications included Run rhino run (Chatto & Windus 1982) written with his wife. Later he co-authored a series of monographs on the ivory trade with Daniel Stiles or myself. Esmond kept copious notebooks and wrote prolifically, always with a fountain pen, producing over 30 books and monographs and more than 350 articles. For many years Esmond was on the Boards of the Kenya Museum Society and the East African Wild Life Society, and selflessly helped with their respective publications, Kenya Past and Present and Swara. He was also a dedicated editorial board member for Pachyderm, the journal of the IUCN SSC African Elephant, African Rhino and Asian Rhino Specialist Groups (and was a member of all three Groups). He believed in “widely disseminating information.” He was often interviewed by the media and advised several wildlife documentary film makers. Such films included “The Rhino War” documentary by Westinghouse TV USA in 1982, National Geographic's “The Rhino War” in 1988, and the BBC TV's “Ivory Wars” in 1989, 2000 and 2012. Esmond was a member of the Association of American Geographers, American Geographical Society, Explorers Club New York, Royal African Society, UK African Studies Association and UK's Fauna and Flora International. He received the Order of the Golden Ark from Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1986, and he was a Chartered Geographer awarded in 2003 by the RGS-IBG. He was a life Fellow of the RGS-IBG and an ardent supporter.

Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas by Joe Bryan and Denis Wood

Reviewed by: Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas by Joe Bryan and Denis Wood Sarah Montoya Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas. By Joe Bryan and Denis Wood. New York: Guilford Press, 2015. vii + 260 pp. Figures, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00 paper. Joe Bryan and Denis Wood explore the limitations of participatory mapping projects in the Americas and their impact on indigenous communities. The authors critique the Bowman Expedition's México Indígena project (2005–2008), led by Peter Herlihy (University of Kansas) and funded by institutions such as the Foreign Military Studies Office of the US Department of Defense, the American Geographical Society (AGS), the University of Kansas's Center of Latin American Studies, and Mexico's Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales. Eventually, the project was accused of geopiracy by indigenous communities who were not informed that the data supplied would be made available to the government. The communities involved issued public statements indicting all associated parties, including Herlihy and the AGS. The México Indígena project serves as a valuable case study in the exploitation of indigenous communities by academic and governmental agencies who gain access to vulnerable populations under the guise of "participatory mapping." Bryan and Wood also discuss the difficulties faced by indigenous communities utilizing maps to make legally legible land claims. Their work in this area largely focuses on the Miskito communities in Nicaragua. In order for indigenous maps to successfully negotiate land claims, the maps must reflect a (neo)colonial geographic and cartographic regime. This socio-spatial organization fails to recognize a communal relationship to territory and instead favors state-sanctioned individual ownership of property. In lieu of the recognition of indigenous sovereignty, the state offers incorporation into its dominant political project and provides recognition of indigenous relationships to land only as it relates to conservation efforts. Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counter-insurgency in the Americas is bookended by an account of the World Human Geographic Conference held at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, in September 2011. The authors recall the horror and history of colonial violence within a space that then functions as a backdrop to a government-funded geography conference on ethics. At the start of the text, it seems like a strange juxtaposition. By the end of the text, it registers as a desperate attempt to address the outcry caused the Bowman Expedition without meaningfully challenging the politics, ethics, or methodologies of those involved. At times refreshingly polemical and unapologetically critical, Bryan and Wood provide valuable historical sketches that link the ideological and material ramifications of maps on indigenous communities and trace the development of property-based cartographic and geographic logics during wartime. Though the México Indígena project serves as a focal point, the authors deftly weave together the development of the American Geographical Society, the rise of indigenous mapping projects in the 1990s and their subsequent limitations, and the relationship between dominant geographic practices and the academic-military-industrial complex. Sarah Montoya Gender Studies University of California, Los Angeles Copyright © 2017 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Geography's Second Twilight

Jerome E. Dobson, professor emeritus, University of Kansas; president of the American Geographical Society; and recipient of the 2014 James R. Anderson Medal of Honor in Applied Geography, discusses his career in the context of America's academic purge of geography. Highlights include his time as a Jefferson Science Fellow with the National Academies and U. S. Department of State. Dobson has been recognized with two lifetime achievement awards for his pioneering work in geographic information systems (GIS) and as Alumnus of 2013 at Reinhardt University. His contributions include the paradigm of automated geography, his instrumental role in originating the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, and his leadership of the LandScan Global Population Database, the de facto world standard for estimating populations at risk. His recent research includes testing a new system for mapping minefields; designing and promulgating the current world standard for cartographic representation of landmines, minefields, and mine actions; and leading six AGS Bowman Expeditions.

Necrology: Richard Rainier Randall

Dick Randall, a well-known figure in the world of toponymy, passed on March 14, 2015. Dick demonstrated continuously that he was multifaceted excelling in numerous and diverse activities. He was always eager to help and assist and was well respected by all who knew him and through his work those who did not know him. Dick was born in Toledo, Ohio on July 21, 1925. He moved to Washington, D.C in 1936 when his father was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as advisor to the National Resources Board. Dick earned an A.B. in 1948 and an M.A. in 1949 each from George Washington University. In 1955, Dick received his Ph.D. from Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts). He also studied in 1953 and 1954 as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Graz in Austria. Dick served his nation in the 94th Infantry during World War II where he was awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge and received the Bronze Star and four Battle Stars. Dick’s career was always in various aspects of geography and cartography specializing in map editing, quality assurance, and applied toponymy. Although Dick began his career formally with the Central Intelligence Agency, he spent much of 1943 with the Alaska Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey interpreting aerial photographs. He began his formal career at the Central Intelligence Agency where he worked from 1955 to 1961 specializing in editing and later as a specialist in matters of Eastern Europe. In 1961 he became the representative in Washington, D.C. for Rand McNally & Company where he was instrumental in overseeing data collection for Rand McNally’s extensive line of products. His work was highlighted in 1969 when he designed the series of maps showing the world’s oceans and water bodies for inclusion in Rand McNally’s Cosmopolitan Atlas of the World. In 1973, Dick became The Geographer at the Defense Mapping Agency (now National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency) where some of his responsibilities included the foreign geographic names program for the federal government and serving as the Executive Secretary of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. He retired from his professional career at the Defense Mapping Agency in 1993, but remained active in various professional organizations including the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping where he established its press relations program in 1966 and the Association of American Geographers where he was heavily involved with that organization’s Careers in Geography Program. He also maintained membership in the American Geographical Society and the American Name Society. Dick was also a long-time active fellow of the Explorers Club and member of the Cosmos Club. At the Washington Chapter of the

Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas by Joe Bryan and Denis Wood

Reviewed by: Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas by Joe Bryan and Denis Wood Mario L. Cardozo Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas. Joe Bryan and Denis Wood. New York: The Guilford Press, 2015. xxiii + 272 pp. $35 paperback (ISBN 9781462519910). In the book Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas, Joe Bryan and Denis Wood present a critique of indigenous mapping projects in the Americas. The authors add to studies that expose the difficulties of simplifying indigenous lands into territories with fixed boundaries adapted to spatial planning. Bryan and Wood suggest that instituting such spatial representations may have unsettling consequences, even when these efforts are intended to establish or strengthen indigenous rights. As the book’s title suggests, the authors contribute to a growing literature of critical geography underscoring the militarization of mapping projects in developing areas. The book’s critique revolves around research led by geography scholar Peter Herlihy and his associates, who have developed and applied participatory research mapping methods during extensive work with traditional peoples in Latin America. Bryan and Wood focus on how some projects involving Herlihy have connected indigenous peoples in Mexico and Central America to U.S. military funding through the American Geographical Society (AGS). To establish this connection, the authors summarize the history of the AGS, including its relationship with imperial forms of geography since its origin in the 1850s and its alleged decline over the last few decades. More recently, the U.S. Defense Department has helped fund AGS’s Bowman Expeditions, which are participatory research projects that collect georeferenced human geography data, with the purported aim of augmenting geographic literacy to promote a better understanding of the world. Herlihy was a key researcher in the inaugural Bowman Expedition, the México Indígena project (2005-2008), which sought to evaluate the impacts of new land-tenure policies on traditional communities in Mexico. The project was controversial; it raised questions of ethics in geographic research linked to informed consent, the supposed ambiguity of the project’s objectives, and the significance of the project’s connection with the U.S. military. Indigenous leaders from Oaxaca, Mexico, who initially collaborated with the project, claimed they were unaware México Indígena was being financed by the U.S. Defense Department and declared themselves victims of geopiracy, fearing information about their communities had been gathered in part to feed intelligence to the U.S. government. Bryan and Wood contextualize the Oaxaca accounts with discussions of how the U.S. military has increasingly injected–albeit clumsily–anthropologic and human-geographic frameworks into its counterinsurgency and Small Wars guidelines, including [End Page 151] the moribund Human Terrain System program. In this manner, the authors link the U.S. government’s funding of AGS’s Bowman Expeditions to the Army’s efforts to collect data for the “applied human geography” components of counterinsurgency programs. The authors discuss some key efforts in securing indigenous rights in the Americas, particularly through territorialization processes. Bryan and Wood start by reviewing how native peoples in Canada pioneered in achieving a level of self-governance. These and other similar efforts involved mapping indigenous lands in order to gain official recognition. Initial indigenous mapping efforts seemed preoccupied with representing aspects of the landscape considered unique and relevant to indigenous peoples. Bryan and Wood argue that the fight for indigenous self-governance has seen a shift that now places more importance on land demarcation and the cartographic principles employed to establish precise boundaries, including GIS and GPS applications. This focus parallels the need—during colonial times in the Americas and in Western culture—to stratify the landscape into fixed categories of land tenure that may not reflect the spatial-temporal and historical complexities of indigenous lives and how they intersect with other geographies. This discussion, in particular, is connected to how a conservative framework of property rights has been used in counterinsurgency discourses to further push the supposed need to formalize land tenure and modernize the landscape. Although the authors engage often in critical thinking, the text is easy to follow, with relatively little jargon, and the story becomes increasingly engrossing as links among different accounts...

David Stoddart OBE

David Stoddart <scp>OBE</scp>

Revealing the ‘Lost World’: The American Geographical Society and the Mapping of Roraima during the 1930s

Este artículo explora el trabajo realizado por los cartógrafos de la American Geographical Society (AGS) durante los 1930s como parte de su proyecto más amplio de construir un mapa a escala 1:1,000,000 de Sur y Centro América, el llamado “Map of Hispanic America.” Nos centramos en la región alrededor de Mount Roraima en la triple frontera entre Brasil, Venezuela y la entonces Guyana Británica. Es una de los áreas más aisladas de la Amazonía, aparentemente una selva prístina no tocada por la colonización Europea, un área frecuentemente representada en los medios como un ‘mundo perdido,’ olvidado por la historia, hogar de muchas especies desconocidas de flora y fauna sobrevivientes de otras épocas geológicas. La compilación de un mapa nuevo y exacto de Roraima presentó varios problemas a los cartógrafos de la AGS. Su esfuerzo por crear una representación racional y cientifica de la region confrontaba continuamente los mitos y leyendas populares promovido por novelistas, periodistas y cinematógrafos.

Reescrituras de una misma geografía: Tensiones entre el Instituto Geográfico Militar (Buenos Aires), el Map of Hispanic America (Nueva York) y la Carte du Monde au Millionième (París – Londres)

This paper examines the network of discussions, productions, and national cartographic projects organized to fulfill the need of having a map of the world based on international cooperation on behalf of universal science. Specifically, we analyze: the Argentinian participation at the meetings of the Committee of International World Map on the one-millionth scale (IWM or MMM); the institutional organization of the cartographic offices in the early Argentinian bureaucracy in relation to the demands of the IWM; the Argentinian cartographic production to contribute to the project; the “answers” of Argentine cartographic offices to the topographic sheets which the American Geographical Society had presented as part of the provisional plan of Map of Hispanic America to supplement the lack of local production. In order to inquire into these issues on the basis of empirical materials, we discuss five historical controversies: (1) the debate about the reliability of sources and data collection; (2) political struggles presented in terms of methodological difficulties; (3) tensions between international goals and national interests; (4) geopolitical conflicts over the islands of the South Atlantic; and (5) similarities and differences between political boundaries and sheet borders: graphic economy versus “geopolitical purity.” This analysis will show that cartographic territories had already become as disputed as geographical territories themselves.

Charles Swithinbank

Charles Swithinbank

A FORGOTTEN AMERICAN: FRANCIS NICHOLS' QUEST FOR LHASA, 1903–04

The New York-born journalist and travel writer Francis Nichols (1879-1904) is best known for his travels through early 20th-century China. However, his attempt in 1903-4 to travel through Tibet to Lhasa ahead of the Younghusband Mission, and thus to become the first westerner to reach the city, has been forgotten, partly on account of his death in the field and the loss of his diary. From new research in recently-catalogued documents and letters in the archives of the American Geographical Society (AGS), the author has compiled an account of Nichols’ mission to Lhasa, including the support he received from US backers, including the AGS, his travels in China, Tibet and India, and his relations with Younghusband and the British. Although Nichols was unable to reach Lhasa, the author observes that he should be credited as the first American to travel from India into the Chumbi valley in southern Tibet and across the Tibetan plateau from Phari to the town of Gyantse, 120 miles south-west of Lhasa.

Geography's American constituency: results from the AGS geographic knowledge and values survey

Does geography have an American constituency? Setbacks for the discipline at all levels of education over the past 65 years would suggest that geography is universally unpopular in the United States, but is that really true? The American Geographical Society (AGS) polled adult US residents on their understanding of the discipline itself and appreciation for geography and geographic education. Responses to the AGS Geographic Knowledge and Values Survey overwhelmingly indicate that a strong pro-geography constituency does exist, though at present it can only be proven within a specific cohort consisting of adult US residents who are more female, more educated, and less ethnically and racially diverse than the overall population. Respondents in this cohort overwhelmingly support expanded geographic education within the US, but overall knowledge regarding key geographic concepts and the discipline itself is weak. The results have policy implications for all education levels and strengthen the case for increased funding of geographic education.

Jobs and kindness: W.E. Rudolph's role in the shaping of perceptions of mining company-indigenous community relations in the Atacama Desert, Chile

American capitalist interests in the Atacama Desert can be traced back to the early 20th century when Anaconda Mining Company acquired the mining operation of Chuquicamata in northern Chile, by then already the world's largest open-pit copper mine. Doing fieldwork in this same area, I heard stories from several elder villagers about an American engineer from Anaconda, a very kind “gringo” in their own words, that unlike other white people, remembered their names, asked them about their lives, and loved to take pictures. Doing research I found that one of the company's chief engineers in charge of exploring for water for mining operations, William E. Rudolph, extensively photographed the neighboring indigenous peoples’ environment and villages, wrote several survey reports exploring water and had written several papers for the American Geographical Society Review. Introducing the concept of ‘moral identity’, this paper explores how the humanitarian actions undertaken by individuals like William Edward Rudolph shaped the perceptions and expectations about mining expressed in the social memory of indigenous peoples in the Atacama Desert.

Globalizing Cartography? The International Map of the World, the International Geographical Union, and the United Nations

ABSTRACTFew maps mirror the history of the twentieth century as closely as the International Map of the World (IMW). A proposal for a map of the entire globe on a scale of 1:1 million, using standard conventional signs, was presented at the Fifth International Geographical Congress in Berne in 1891 by the German geographer Albrecht Penck. More than two decades later, the final specification was finally published shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, a crisis that brought a halt to the international collaboration on which the project depended. The IMW’s fortunes waxed and waned over the next three decades, necessitating a major review of its continuing value after the Second World War. A new IMW Executive Commission under the chairmanship of John Kirtland Wright, Director of the American Geographical Society, was established at the 1949 Lisbon conference of the International Geographical Union. Drawing on Wright’s correspondence in the AGS archives, this paper examines the debates between the national cartographic agencies and related societies involved in the future of the IMW, with particular reference to the transfer of the project’s Central Bureau from the British Ordnance Survey in Southampton to the United Nations in New York in the early 1950s. This discussion, which focused mainly on the need to combine the IMW with an internationalized version of the US-dominated 1:1 million World Aeronautical Chart, reveals the on-going tensions between the ideals of scientific internationalism embodied in the IMW’s original proposal and the harsh realities of national self-interest in the early years of the Cold War.