Posts Tagged ‘geography’
“Dust to dust”*…
Back in 2016, we visited Jay Owens and his fascinating newsletter on dust… which went silent a couple of years later. Those of us who missed it, and were worried about its author were relieved to learn that he’d pulled back in order to turn his thinking into a book. That book is now here: Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles, and The Guardian is here with an excerpt…
… Nobody normally thinks about dust, what it might be doing or where it should go: it is so tiny, so totally, absolutely, mundane, that it slips beneath the limits of vision. But if we pay attention, we can see the world within it.
Before we go any further, I should define my terms. What do I mean by dust? I want to say everything: almost everything can become dust, given time. The orange haze in the sky over Europe in the spring, the pale fur that accumulates on my writing desk and the black grime I wipe from my face in the evening after a day traversing the city. Dust gains its identity not from a singular material origin, but instead through its form (tiny solid particles), its mode of transport (airborne) and, perhaps, a certain loss of context, an inherent formlessness. If we knew precisely what it was made of, we might not call it dust, but instead dander or cement or pollen. “Tiny flying particles,” though, might suffice as a practical starting definition…
…
Dust is simultaneously a symbol of time, decay and death – and also the residue of life. Its meaning is never black or white, but grey and somewhat fuzzy. Living with dust – as we must – is a slow lesson in embracing contradiction: to clean, but not identify with cleanliness; to respect the material need for hygiene while distrusting it profoundly as a social metaphor…
A fascinating sample of a fascinating book: “Empire of dust: what the tiniest specks reveal about the world,” from @hautepop in @guardian.
Pair with: “Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand” and “In every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.”
* from the burial service in the Book of Common Prayer
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As we examine the elemental, we might send exploratory birthday greetings to Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt; he was born on this date in 1769. The younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, Alexander was a geographer, geologist, archaeologist, naturalist, explorer, and champion of Romantic philosophy. Among many other contributions to human knowledge, his quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography; he surveyed and collected geological, zoological, botanical, and ethnographic specimens, including over 60,000 rare or new tropical plants.
As a geologist, Humboldt made pioneering observations of geological stratigraphy, structure (he named the Jurassic System), and geomorphology; and he understood the connections between volcanism and earthquakes. His advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
For more, see: The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World.
“The map? I will first make it.”*…
For map enthusiasts of all ages– Very Expensive Maps. As its self-description explains…
You get what you pay for: Very Expensive Maps is a podcast by cartographer Evan Applegate in which he interviews better cartographers. Listen to the best living mapmakers describe how they create worlds in ink, pixels, graphite, threads, paint, ceramic, wood and metal.
A podcast about maps? Let Jason Kottke reassure you…
A podcast about a visual medium like maps is maybe a tiny bit like dancing about architecture, but Applegate makes it work. The archives [from which, the examples above] are a key part of the show… lots of links to the maps discussed during each episode…
Applegate’s hope that you will be inspired: “Remember: you can, and should, make your own maps.“
* Patrick White, Voss
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As we contemplate cartography, we might recall that it was on this date in 1682 that William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware (from James, the Duke of York, who gotten it from the defeated previous owners, the Dutch), and added it to his colony of Pennsylvania. New maps were created.
“Geography is destiny”*…
Why are some large regions (like China) politically unified, while others (like Europe) are divergent? Researchers at The Centre for Economic Policy Research have tested a leading theory…
Why are some parts of the world politically fragmented while others tend to be dominated by a single state? This age-old question has implications for many important topics in comparative economic development such as the origins of the Great Divergence (see Broadberry 2021) or the divergence in political institutions between China and Europe (see Jia et al. 2021).
Scholars going back at least as far as Montesquieu and Hume have attributed the rise of Western Europe to its persistent political fragmentation. More recently, Jones (2003), Mokyr (2016, 2017), and Scheidel (2019) have developed this thesis in novel ways. These authors acknowledge that a polycentric state system has static costs such as tariff barriers and more wars but argue that, on the net, it is associated with better dynamic incentives for intellectual innovation and state building.
But what determines these patterns of fragmentation? More concretely: what factors account for the prevalence of political polycentrism in Europe and the prominence of political centralisation in China? A leading explanation of this phenomenon is the ‘fractured land’ hypothesis, most famously stated by Diamond (1997). According to this view, fractured land such as mountain barriers, indented coastlines, and rugged terrain precluded the development of large empires in Europe. In comparison, China’s geographical features led to its recurring unifications.
While the fractured land hypothesis has been widely cited and much criticised (e.g. Hoffman 2015), it has not been formally modeled or tested. In Fernández-Villaverde et al. (2022), we fill this gap by providing a quantitative investigation of the fractured-land hypothesis. We do so by modeling the dynamic process of state-building and exploring how fractured land shaped inter-state competition in unexpected, non-linear ways…
Simulating the model between 1000 BCE and 1500 CE, it can replicate the fragmentation of Europe and the consolidation of China. Modified versions of the model can predict patterns of development in the Americas and Africa, while future extensions could try to disentangle the importance of culture and religion versus geography…
Fascinating: “The fractured land hypothesis: Why China is Unified but Europe is not,” from @cepr_org.
* Abraham Verghese
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As we muse on the model (and remember that “fragmentation” is relative), we might recall that it was on this date in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that West Virginia was admitted as a state to the Union.
A key border state during Civil War, it was the only state to form by separating from a Confederate state (Virginia), one of two states (along with Nevada) admitted to the Union during the Civil War, and the second state to separate from another state, after Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820.
Some of its residents held slaves, but most were yeoman farmers, and architects of statehood provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in the new state constitution. Indeed, the state legislature abolished slavery in the state, and at the same time ratified the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery nationally on February 3, 1865.
“When you leave the Island of Pentam and sail about 100 miles, you reach the Island of Java”*…
Indonesia is the 14th largest country by area at 735,358 square miles; Java, the island on which the capital Jakarta is located, is only 58,000 square miles– but Java is home to over half the Indonesian population, over 150 million people. It’s the most populous island in the world, and one of its most populous places. Tomas Pueyo explores the reasons why…
Java’s population density is 1,100 people per square km. This is 3x the density of Japan or the Philippines, 7x that of China, 30x that of the US. It’s nearly the density of Houston, Texas. For an entire island! With volcanoes!
Even weirder: Its neighboring islands in Indonesia are not that densely populated. Compared to its big neighboring islands, it’s 8x more densely populated than Sumatra and 30x more than Borneo.
Why!? What made this island so special?
Read on for a fascinating explanation: “Why is Java So Weird?!” from @tomaspueyo via his wonderful newsletter Uncharted Territories.
* Marco Polo (who was probably, it turns out, actually talking about Sumatra)
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As we dig into development, we might recall that it was on this date in 1497 that Dominican friar and populist agitator Girolamo Savonarola, having convinced the populace of Florence to expel the Medici and recruited the city-state’s youth in a puritanical campaign, presided over “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” the public burning of art works, books, cosmetics, and other items deemed to be vessels of personal aggrandizement. Many art historians, relying on Vasari’s account, believe that Botticelli, a partisan of Savonarola, consigned several of his paintings to the flames and “fell into very great distress.” Others are not so certain. In any case, it seems sure that the fire consumed works by Fra Bartolomeo, Lorenzo di Credi, and many other painters, along with a number of statues and other antiquities.
“Maps are a way of organizing wonder”*…
… and of understanding where places and things actually are. As John Nelson elegantly demonstrates, we sometimes need that remedial help…
If learned early on, a foundationally incorrect view of the world can perpetuate, as students naturally build knowledge in light of a past, incorrect, understanding. Something as basic as our assumptions about the relative locations of Earth’s continents is an interesting, and actually sort of fun, example of how we can get things wrong right off the bat. Ultimately, everything is learned, but some curious geographic errors tend to persist more than others.
So what are some tantalizing locational mistakes that seemingly come pre-installed in American students’ minds that geography teachers wrestle to overcome?
So glad you asked! Here is a cherry-picked handful of examples that we’ll dive into…
- The northiness of Africa
- The northiness of Europe
- The eastiness of South America…
Some common geographic mental misplacements, beautifully illustrated: “Misconceptions,” from @John_M_Nelson @Esri.
See also the companion piece, “Enclaves & Exclaves” and John’s personal blog, “Adventures In Mapping.”
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As we grasp geography, we might recall that it was on this date in 1830 that U. S. Secretary of the Navy John Branch established the Depot of Charts and Instruments, a humble undertaking with an annual budget of $330; its primary function was the restoration, repair, and rating of navigational instruments. But from that seed grew the United States Naval Observatory, a scientific and military facility that produces geopositioning, navigation, and timekeeping data for the United States Navy and the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the oldest scientific agencies in the U. S., and remains the country’s leading authority for astronomical and timing data for all purposes.
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