Chapter 8 - Geography Always Matters!

Before we even start - lets get something clear between us - reality matters. Oh sure, concepts, theories, critical thinking and all that matters too, but remember what we humans are. There is a shared reality out there. Physical geography is all part of that.

From before we walked out of Africa, humans and our evolutionary ancestors before us, have had geographic issues. The mountain people don't trust the valley people or the river people hate the ocean people or the ... you get my point...

We humans are creatures of a physical world. We are products of evolution. We are social. We get hungry easily and we are difficult to satisfy. We all live in some specific place, learn one specific language as our first, go to some specific school, or job, have some specific people who raised us... We all see the world contingent upon the specific culture in which we were raised or we find ourselves... Geography always matters in everything we do.

Do we walk to work or school or take the bus or maintain a car - all this is impacted by the reality of where you live and work and go to school as much as your particular economic situation. That, too, is effected by the specific geographic realities of your life.

I knew a guy who wouldn't date any one who lived more than fifteen minutes from him. In LA that really effects who you date. I think he was a little too needy (or some other word). But you get my point. Its not just geography that matters, it's you - how you see your world.

But don't forget - there is reality our there - it is hotter in the Valley and cooler at the beach. Stuff like corn grows good there, but not here, where stuff like pumpkins grow really well "but corn, not so much" as one farmer once told me.

Because geography matters it can also be manipulated and used by folks in power. It does not take a strong imagination to see throughout ancient history to today how human political leaders have used geographical differences to their advantage in stirring up resentment or forging alliances. From the ancient Greeks and Maya, to the Great Powers of WWI, to the superpowers of the cold war, geography has always been tied to wealth and power... in the perception of the actors but also in realty.

Learn the lesson of Timbuktu, a great city, a trading post at the cross roads of the world, for a brief moment in history. Now it is nearly swallowed by the desert. Learn the lesson of the so-called dust bowl of the American depression era and the de-forestation of North America (in the 1800's) and tell me geography doesn't matter.

The map your authors provide on page 239, I must admit, gives me a headache. I'm not at all sure what the point may be, except to say that it is a complicated world. And as simplistic as the map on page 239 may be, it is almost entirely the continuation of Western/Northern bias is seeing the world.

Look at the map on page 233 - the so-called map of the world. Of course it is wrong. It is not at all how the world looks. I don't just mean the different colors for each country and the borders being clearly defined around the world. That is of course a fabrication to make the map understandable even if it is not a completely accurate record of reality. Its an attempt to accurately demarcate boarders. But all maps are in some ways wrong - or lies - maps are two dimensional representations of a three dimensional realty.

Look at the globe - at earth - it is not a perfect sphere (take an earth science class, please) and the center of the planet - the equator - is not the center of this map. Look at the Pacific Coast of South America - the country is called Ecuador because it is on the equator - draw a line parallel to the bottom of the map from Ecuador around the world. The line is far from the center of the map. Making countries in the north appear larger. Many maps have this "northern bias."

While we are drawing lines on the map on page 233, from the equator go north to that first blue dashed line - that's the Northern Tropic - the Tropic of Cancer - draw a line parallel to the bottom of the map across the world in line with that tropic.

Notice how almost all of the rich industrialized countries are north of the tropic? Most of the world's industrial capacity, industrial wealth, liquid capital, investment capital, stock financing, bank transactions, etc. are all in the northern one quarter of the globe. So the rich countries are often called "the north" and the remaining countries in the world are called "the south." Thus you and I - no matter how poor you are or may feel, or how rich we may actually be - compared to the rest of the world - we are all northerners. We live in a "rich country" and that effects how we see the world.

Remember you and I and almost everyone you know here at LACC is also part of another minority in the world, we are western - that means we are part of a nearly 3000 year old history known as the "Greco/Roman/Judeo/Christian tradition." Or what the great professors of old called "the Western World."

If you want to draw a line separating the east from the west it's not that easy. It's not a strait line at all. You have to include Europe and the so-called New World, but not really Africa. You can't include any Asian country - even though Japan is really rich, industrialized and a long standing stable democracy, it's not Western, but arguably Australia is... what-a-world?

Sure it's a complicated world, but that's why we have classes in international relations, heck - you could get a Ph.D. in international relations - it has to be complicated - it is realty.

While we are on that subject, I remember being at USC School of International Relations when I studied for my PhD (fyi: I dropped out before my dissertation was complete) and talking about country shape just like the maps on p 248 and the accompanying discussion in the text. I'm still not sure it matters what we call different shapes or conditions of countries - everyone plays the hand they are dealt, you can't change geography (at least not that much).

The map of land locked counties (on p. 251) is important to keep in mind but I challenge you to find maps of the arable land (usable farm land) on the planet and maps of the main sources of fresh water on the planet - you will see a planet in peril as both are shrinking quite rapidly.

So, we are left with the question of whether geography still matters in a globalized world and I must admit that is a silly questions. It matters even more. Maybe some of the old geopolitical differences have greatly lessened but it seems the trend around the world is not towards greater unification and cooperation, but towards fragmentation - along religious, ethnic economic and other lines.

This is the paradox of our day.

The world is more globalized ... and more "Balkanized" than ever before.

Click here for a short video on my favorite story about the power of geography.