Around the world in 448 pages
DETOURS | Atlases, maps help figure out how things
We made it through another Geography Awareness Week.
Who knew?
(Courtesy)
Not Sarah Palin, fer sure.
Fox News reported that the Republican vice presidential candidate didn't seem to know that Africa is a continent.
The annual Oxford Atlas of the World (Oxford University Press, $80) hit stores as Geography Awareness Week ended Saturday.
Ben Keene is the editor of Oxford's atlas program. He has surfed in St. Ives Bay, England, marched for peace in Milan, Italy, and helped excavate an ancient city in Honduras. Sounds like he would make a pretty good vice president.
"The National Geographic Society advocated for Geography Awareness Week in the 1980s," Keene explained from his office, across the street from the Empire State Building in Manhattan. "As Americans we rank pretty poorly in terms of geographic literacy. It's a campaign to get geography into schools and have people recognize it's not just memorizing state capitals. Geography really is the study of place and space."
Geography can encompass foodways, musical regions, sports and politics.
How should a reader approach the 448-page, 10-pound atlas?
"Think of something that has been covered in the news that was unfamiliar in some way," answered Keene, 30. Like maybe Africa.
"Go to that map section in the atlas. Check out the index. If it's a city, check out the detailed downtown city maps. If the city is related to energy or oil, the front of the book is thematically organized, so we have maps and charts that deal with the top oil consumers and the top automobile producers. You can flip back and forth."
That's why an atlas is more fun than Google or GPS technology.
It's the same argument I use in buying music at record stores as opposed to online. There's a sense of adventure in walking into Dusty Groove in Chicago to buy something from Trinidad and walking out with some stuff from Brazil. An atlas works the same way. I'll be checking out Hawaii and land in Japan. You have the whole world in your hands.
"The technologies people have at their fingertips are astounding," Keene said. "Nonetheless, you have a different perspective orienting yourself on a page in an atlas. Often times online, people are typing in a search term and they go right there. What I appreciate about maps and atlases is that they're a tool to help you figure out relationships between things. You make connections."
In conjunction with every edition of the atlas, Oxford announces its "Place of the Year."
This year's 15th annual place is Kosovo -- page 202 of the new atlas. In February, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia.
"It's the world's newest country," Keene said. "In a way, it's a microcosm of what's going on around the world. It would enable me to have broader conversations about political geography and how the world is in flux.
"Our attempt is to steer away from something U.S.-focused," he added, "although Chicago would be particularly newsworthy this year."
Chicago is the ruffled work shirt of America. New York is the top hat and Los Angeles is the lipstick.
"I don't have a deep knowledge of political history, but it is significant that our 44th president-elect comes from the Midwest," Keene said. "Chicago has a history of being the crossroads. It strikes me that for someone's whose message has been to emphasize our commonalities that geographically speaking, his road leads out from the middle."
I like old maps and have been known to pick up a vintage globe at the Kane County Flea Market just to see how the world has changed. Keene was on the same page. He has a framed page from an 1848 atlas in his living room.
"I get a kick out of all the weird names," he said. "There's a part of modern India that's labeled Hindustan. It was a different world in more ways than one. People now may be caught up more with instant information than historical data."
As I've written before, foodways are becoming another form of travel. Keene has a weekly blog, http://blog.oup.com, where he has riffed on "The Geography of Food," especially with recent legislation that all unprocessed meat, produce and select nuts be labeled with their country of origin.
I smell an Oxford Food Atlas.
"People are becoming re-aware," Keene said. "You used to have a relationship with your milk man or a butcher. We've lost that over time. Oddly the movement is starting in urban areas and spreading."
For example, the current Oxford Atlas of the World has a chapter on food production, which follows a section on "Conflict and Cooperation" (where there's a map showing all the wars since 1945). This is not the atlas I grew up on.
"Atlases started with the Portuguese and men who would collect different mariners' maps," Keene said. "They would bind them together and sell them. From there it evolved into an atlas of the world as people mapped more of the planet.
"It wasn't until fairly recently that atlases expanded to become sort of a map fact book. Now we include statistics, almost like an almanac. The front section [food production, standards of living, climate change, etc.] is where we try to explain issues that are significant in shaping the world now. It has become a daunting task."