Last year at Brock University while I was attending a Political Science course, the professor showed the class an image of how the Americans viewed the world. It showed different features that many people may feel strongly agreeable or strongly disagreeable. After the lecture, I asked the professor if it was possible for him to send that image to my university e-mail address and he was more than glad to. I kept it stored onto my computer but now I have a very good use for it. At that time, I found this map to be just a hilarious piece of artwork. However, with the theories we learned in this GEOG 3300 class, I was critically thinking about it and understood it as a spatial division of geography. Meaning, spaces and places are not just bounded under a certain region of scale but it can also have a global effect. This map shows how Americans view the world according to their own interest and concerns. Like for example, how they view India (Curry) or how they view Southern Africa (Diamonds). It may seem bluntly stereotypical but it does show a lot of truth behind it.
I just wanted to know if any of you would agree to the perspective of this map and if anyone out there would disagree with it. I personally agree that ‘some’ Americans, to the most part, really do follow this map that they created in their minds.
PS: Well, I uploaded my blog just in time but I really do hope I did this participation web blog thing properly and not mess it up.
Reference: Brock University, POLI 1F90 Lecture - 2006.
1 comment:
I wanted to reply to your blog since I found it quite interesting. You made an interesting point about how the Western World, mainly the US, views other parts of the world through stereotypes and generalizations. I definately agree that images of places are created(imaginative geography?) and when we view a map in our minds (mental map, lets say) we tend to visualize these stereotypes, making associations (eg Canada and "snow" or "moose", India and "curry") This can support the idea that places are constructed (social constructionist approach). Just as you were reminded of this map from another course, I also can link past courses to this particular topic of space and place. For example, last sememster i took "postcolonial geography" and we studied how the American National Geographic Magazine portrays the people of Africa. This can relate to your argument as this shows how the US percieve other groups--and also how they construct the images they want to construct. For example, African women are percieved as "morally loose" and "oversexualized beings". But on the other hand, the magazine constructed these women as passive and barbaric beasts (almost as if we should feel sorry for them becasue they "dont know any better") The argument made in the article said that it was ok for national geographic to photograph these women nude because they were from "backward" societies, and they were primitive "brown beasts", so it was ok to view their naked bodies in magazines because they were like a "species" below the white man. Also, sometimes the cover of a national geographic will say "Africa", with a photo of an African woman. The woman comes to symbolize the country, as we then begin to envision the woman respresenting the country.
So yes, the US and the Western world in general, make perceptions and construct images of the "other". To also comment on another blog where someone mentioned the media and their perceptions of the middle east... Again, this demonstrates how images are constructed. For example, watching CNN, you often see images of the middle east, particularly images of violence, and these images are often paired with a religious call to God (im not sure what it is called but it has a distinct sound)...this makes the viewer associate the islamic religion with violence and vice versa...this is one way the western world/media manipulates the images of the middle east in order to construct the images they want us to beleive....
It is quite interesting to see how images of spaces and places are in fact produced rather than "naturally occuring"
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