Radical Cartography: What Maps Tell Us About Who We Are
$19.99
Radical Cartography by William Rankin is a book about mapping, but it is also a book about a particular way of seeing and communicating. Visual argument shapes the kinds of questions we ask and the kinds of answers we might discover. In Chicago, the stakes are neighborhood identity and segregation. Elsewhere, the questions are no less complex. What is “wilderness,” and what place does it have for us? What—and where—is the Islamic World? How did the geography of slavery shape the Civil War? How does the legacy of European imperialism still shape geopolitics today? What does rising political partisanship have to do with the economy?
These are not questions about data alone, and data on its own is never enough. They are questions about the spatial organization of our society—and the place of social, political, economic, and natural forces in constructing it. They are also questions about our identity and our shared history, both as individuals and as communities. Most of all, they are questions about our ability to structure the world as we see fit—and the consequences of doing so.