A political map shows country, state, and territory boundaries and makes a political statement about ownership. Traditional maps can be inaccurate and make some countries appear larger. The Gall-Peter map is more accurate and less politically charged, but can challenge people’s perceptions. It can help depoliticize past worldviews and give a more socially conscious view of the world.
A political map is a map that shows lines that define countries, states, and/or territories. It differs from other maps in that its purpose is specifically to show boundaries. It also makes a deliberate political statement about which areas of the Earth belong to which country or state.
Cartography, in the past, has been the subject of some accusations. Because the Earth is round, two-dimensional or paper maps sometimes make some countries appear larger than they actually are. This may be deliberate, in some cases, and make a map more “political” if it makes the “home” nation appear larger and a “rival” country appear smaller. A fictional example occurred on the TV show The West Wing, when the souped-up group Cartographers for Social Equality showed how the most common political map in use in the United States is quite inaccurate in the way it shows the sizes of countries outside of the United States. While the group was fictitious, the errors were not.
The traditional projection map used in US textbooks is incorrect in its size assessment. In particular, Africa appears to be roughly the same size as Greenland, where it is in fact more than ten times as large. Areas representing the United States are also similar in size to the former Soviet Union and China combined, which is inaccurate.
Part of the error in this type of map is from trying to zoom in on things further away from the equator. A new system has been proposed, called the Gall-Peter map, which significantly changes the aspect ratio and makes it more accurate. This map is less politically charged, though still relatively rare, and many people who are used to standard projection maps find that it just looks wrong. North and South America look much smaller and less wide, while Asia, by comparison, looks huge. Africa is also significantly larger.
Some argue that a change to a Gall-Peter political map could contribute to a more socially conscious view of the world, and particularly of the United States’ place in it. Because this format makes the United States smaller and Africa much larger, for example, it can give a better idea of how poverty or AIDS affects African people.
Such a map does not allow the viewer to consider the countries of Africa small, but rather shows that they are relatively large and have large populations. In this way, the Gall-Peter map can help depoliticize past worldviews, especially when those views are nationalist or imperialist. While the map may still be a political map by its strict definition, it may not have the political overtones of previous maps.
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