Mapping North America: Visual Representations of Canada and the United States in Recent Academic Work and Editorial Cartoons

How does geography constrict or define historical imagination? In a 2004 paper, W. Dirk Raat of Arizona State University a range of new conceptual maps of world. Raat's particular intent was to challenge Euro-centric bias that underscores representation of North America on world maps, but lessons he imparts are just as applicable to an intra-North American line of questioning. In his work, Raat deals with what authors Martin W. Lewis and Karen E. Wigen term the myth of continents. According to all of these scholars, current classification of world into seven distinct continents is an interpretation begun by three-continent model of Ancient Greece and then expanded to encompass land masses that were later discovered and explored by Europeans. problem with classification is not in division of land per se, but in assumptions which that division fosters. Thus, for example, one might conclude under seven-continent scheme that dividing line between North and South America reflects a shift in patterns of flora and fauna, when in fact northern Mexico is true ecological border in Western hemisphere. Moreover, continental boundaries are highly politicized; even those only marginally aware of European history can understand arbitrary eastern border with Asia, and unnatural inclusion of Iceland and Greenland in West. (1) Raat suggests that continental system be abandoned and that it be replaced with a regional scheme. (2) To do so, he draws upon Joel Garreau's Nine Nations of North America; in this 1981 work, Garreau suggested that few of actual cultural, social, and trade boundaries in North America are actually reflected in existing national and international borders. Instead, Garreau maintained, North America is made up of nine distinct regional cultures, separated not only by national boundaries but by architecture, music, language ... ways of living ... [and by] its own list of desires. (3) Region--as defined by physical geography, economics, cultural patterns, or even social values--has since become a dynamic paradigm in study of North American societies. As such, past two decades have seen works ranging from (to give a few of many examples) geologically-based premise of John C. Hudson, to culturally-based premise of Carol Higham and Robert Thacker, to values-based premise of Michael Adams. (4) Garreau, followed by Raat and others who accept this line of reasoning, helped craft a body of literature that reorients North American scholars away from traditional international boundaries and pushes them toward more organic divisions not based on political and legal convention. (5) implicit question in all of these works, however, is this: How should we organize and conceptualize our representation of physical space? In answering that question, we must make a choice as to factors that we take into consideration. Do we use political boundaries, such that, in North America, U.S.-Canada border and U.S.-Mexico border are primary indicators? Do we use natural boundaries, so that rivers, mountains, temperate zones, and plant patterns determine characteristics of one zone or another? Do we use cultural elements--whether languages, patterns of settlement, historic agricultural practices, or social institutions--to suggest a more accurate reflection of where boundaries lie in world of practical experience? In this article, I ask all of these questions, and then ask whether or not these concerns have helped put emphasis in wrong place. In short, I suggest that rather than concerning ourselves with developing best model to apply to geographic representation, we study choices which lie behind those representations, whatever they happen to be. Is Map Territory? Alfred Korzybski, popularly known as creator of general semantics, gave rise to expression, The map is not territory. …

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