Representing the World
Representation of the globe
Credit: Anton Balazh / Shutterstock
Map are neither objective nor exhaustive. They are only an interpretation of reality. Map-making is the result of a series of choices, subjective readings, a way of seeing things, sometimes involving a manipulation of reality, often an approximation of it. The resulting graphic images should enable the user to perceive the information represented instantaneously and memorize it easily. Effective images rely on the rules of graphic semiology. The representational conventions of traditional geography – north up, Europe-centered, and the Pacific Ocean cut in two, with conventional limits – no longer suffice to map the world.
Any mapping project raises the question of the availability, quality and coherence of sources and statistical data, these reflecting the actors that produce them. Despite the difficulty of assembling the relevant data on certain subjects and the challenges involved in representing the density of complex exchange networks, the present work attempts to achieve a balance between a vision of juxtaposed states and that of an increasingly transnational and global world, for each of the six major themes it deals with.
Identification of sources and data collection
Researching, collecting and processing data and displaying the results graphically are the main stages in the process of designing the document. Decisions must be made according to rigorous criteria, because they condition the interpretation of the graphic documents produced (maps, charts, matrices, etc.). Choosing a theme to map means highlighting a specific case among others. The first and most important decision is to clearly identify the subject to be presented graphically.
The digital revolution has made social science statistics more accessible, more bountiful and of better quality (despite shortcomings in certain areas). The complexity of the phenomena dealt with in this atlas means that they need to be assembled, compared and connected them, bearing in mind the statuses and rationales of those who produced them. One must also accept the fact that maps and charts only show a compromise, at a given point in time, between a research question, more or less verifiable data, and choices as to how to represent them.
So-called official statistics (produced by national statistics bureaus, ministries, government agencies, etc.), taken from national censuses, national population counts and surveys, are the most abundant. The quality of this data in terms of exhaustiveness, comparability, historicity, topicality, and so on, depends on the administrative, technical and conceptual capacities that states are willing and able to bring into play. These may be amnesiac, unavailable, even falsified, particularly in autocratic states; or mediocre and lacking reliability in poorer states where civil registries are incomplete. Furthermore, bureaucrats who produce data do not all enjoy the same guarantees of independence, which influences the quality of the results, especially where migration, employment and unemployment, and religious or ethnic affiliation are concerned. Lastly, some data are the result of administrative operations by state actors; functioning, in this case, more as management tools than knowledge instruments.
International organizations (IO) collect, compile, harmonize and publish a considerable body of statistical data produced by their member states. They also conduct their own studies, calculate estimates and projections, and construct composite indicators. These are a standard reference, but the rationale behind their production is strongly tied to their objectives (rankings, evaluations, etc.). IOs also produce summary reports on various themes, on their own or in conjunction with other inter-state organizations such as the OECD and regional development banks. Abundance, however, does not solve the cartographer’s basic problem, which is to manage to understand and chart a world of continuous transnational flows using mostly state-produced information.
The major NGOs (Doctors without Borders, Reporters without Borders, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Transparency International, etc.) regularly produce data, analyses and reports that are made widely available online and that serve as a basis for their advocacy activities. Transnational by definition, they have fewer constraints, but their activist aspect must always be factored in. Data put out by certain research centers are also standard references in certain areas of study such as poverty or conflict studies.
Private actors, particularly businesses, are often in competition and thus do not readily reveal their data. For instance, revenue figures for global corporations are collected by private agencies and available in the trade press, but they can be difficult to cross-check with other sources. Other information can be gleaned from annual activity reports designed for shareholders, the publication of which is mandatory for companies quoted on the stock exchange. These reports are interesting in what they reveal about the organization and the company’s own logic, but there is often a dearth of visualized data. Opacity prevails as regards global financial flows, which moreover are extremely mobile and partly illicit. Lastly, many statistics that can serve as a basis for gainful activity are only available for a fee. Little is known about illegal actors (illegal migrations, tax havens, mafias, trafficking, informal or forced labor, etc.), although the global risks these invisible segments of the world economy are beginning to be studied more closely by certain UN agencies such as the United Nations Office against Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Labor Organization (ILO).
Scales of time and space
The continuous flow of information that individuals are immersed in leaves little room for taking account of longer timeframes that would shed light on events. Used to illustrate current events, figures set to images are too often isolated from their context. The sources are generally not referenced or incomplete and not necessarily crosschecked. Especially in economics, rates of change from one year to another are often highlighted, leaving aside absolute values and the main orders of magnitude. Paradoxically, an excess of information often produces amnesia, and failing to contextualize the present within broader trends does not help to convey complexity. It is equally important to strive for multiscalarity both in terms of social space as well as time.
Even in the event that a temporally coherent series that holds true for all countries permits diachronic and synchronic comparisons, the result can prove quite unsatisfactory. Indeed, often significant economic, demographic and social inequalities among regions within the same state are smoothed over by sometimes misleading national averages, particularly for large countries. It is only possible represent social-spatial diversity in cartographic reasoning and projection by using often fragmentary subnational data that are poorly connected and difficult to compare from one country to another. Only the European Union, with Eurostat, has a finely-tuned and coherent statistical apparatus. Large federal states supply data about their federated entities, but national nomenclatures do not coincide. Lastly, for the world’s major conurbations, there is very little reliable and comparable data. In all, the widening gap between the abundance of data and the complexity of processes underway shows that using old or incomplete tools to approach a globalized, global and local (glocal), transnational world involving multiple actors is increasingly difficult. Researchers, cartographers, teachers, experts, journalists, students and users of the present resource are urged to proceed with vigilance and critical detachment.
Seeing the world: forms and points of view
Cartographic projection is a technique for transcribing a spherical reality – the Earth globe – onto a flat surface – the map. For mathematical reasons, projection cannot at once accurately represent distances, angles and surface areas. Each projection therefore selectively distorts one of these dimensions. The position of the map’s center also influences its interpretation, because it gives greater importance to the areas placed in the middle.
This combination of projection and centering causes considerable discrepancies in the “shape” of the world. For instance, the Mercator projection distorts surfaces closer to the poles, thus exaggerating the size of Northern hemisphere countries. The “plate carrée” (“square plate”) projection, cylindrical as well, represents surfaces more accurately. Conversely, some projections concentrate discontinuities and distortions in the oceans to preserve the shape of the continents. This is true for the Waterman and Fuller projections, which, by separating the continental land masses, make it easier to trace flows, for the Goode projection, which divides the continents into vertical lobes, and the Atlantis projection, asymmetrical around the Atlantic Ocean. Lastly, the Bertin 1953, Natural Earth and Mollweide projections offer interesting compromises for what is known as thematic cartography, combining accuracy of continental surfaces and shapes with a compact design.
There is a nearly infinite range of possibilities to choose from in centering a cartographic projection. Certain parameterizations produce a world that is difficult to recognize, so conditioned are we to our Europe-centered, North-up view. It is a difficult habit to break. Depending on the projection, decentering can be performed on the longitude (sliding East-West), the latitude (flipping North and South), rotation or all three at the same time. Khartis, the online cartography tool, makes it easy to play with these distortions and points of view.
Various cartographic projections
Seeing time: charts and diagrams
Data visualization in the form of charts and diagrams proves just as effective as maps. They provide alternatives when spatialization is incomplete, non-existent or even impossible, or else when one wants to simplify information into categories. Charts are highly suitable for showing the chronological dimension.
The vertical scale should be carefully thought out. In addition to the base value, where the zero axis is sometimes truncated, it is important to differentiate between arithmetic and logarithmic progression. The former, the most common, shows a succession of peaks whereas the latter depicts a change using the slope of a curve. The arithmetic scale often produces an impression of exponential change without visualizing the low values; the logarithmic scale transcribes a more accurate evolution from one date to another and makes it possible to compare trends even when values are very low.
Sets of curves are suitable charts for comparing chronological profiles. Curves are sorted vertically to bring out similarities in time (start, peaks, troughs and end).
Vertical scale graph and collection of curves
Types of data
Maps and diagrams are constructed images combining graphic elements, symbols and colors. They are therefore partly subjective. Nevertheless, they are the result of a scholarly approach that relies in particular on the nature of the data. Two main families of data can be identified by the relationships between values.
Quantities or numbers (static or dynamic: population, people flows, market capitalization, GDP, etc.) are sorted by increasing or decreasing order, as they describe a proportional relationship. These quantities can be compared to another, in which case they describe relative quantities (percentages, rates, densities, yields, etc.). They are also ordered, but often grouped into categories that have a hierarchical relationship. This partition – or discretization – is not done at random. Statistical methods (mean, standard deviation, median, etc.) or manual methods (observed thresholds) are used. These methods are varied and produce different maps. For maps to be comparable it is vital that they use the same type of discretization.
Qualitative data can be ordered (in logical order, by date, etc.). They are then processed in an identical manner to relative, or non-organized quantities (presence/absence of an NGO in a country, membership of a regional organization, etc.), and have relationships of difference or resemblance.
(Carto)graphic transcription
New trends in cartography developed thanks to progress in the semiology of graphics beginning in the 1950s-1960s, driven by Jacques Bertin’s pioneering research. In a clear departure from the preceding period in which topographical (or survey) maps and regional sketch maps predominated, Bertin synthesized a set of rules making it possible to process and transcribe information visually. His research on visual variables combined with the “graphic primitives” (points, lines, areas) revolutionized cartography in such a way as to finally produce maps “to look at” (using symbols and colors) and not “to read” (with an abundance of text and figures). Although graphic semiology was subsequently adapted, enriched and sometimes rivaled with the emergence of new tools and practices (geographic information system, computer graphics, dynamic cartography, dataviz, etc.), it remains a robust and essential visual grammar.
Graphic choices should be made in coherence with the data represented. Proportionality, order and difference call for different graphic responses. Mixing them up makes the image hard to read at best, at worst inaccurate, or even manipulative.
Proportionality and order
The proportional relationship between absolute quantities is rendered by varying the size of points and thickness of lines. Relative quantities already classified are represented by color gradients, organized from lightest to darkest (monochrome). The visual order adheres to the order of the data. A visual break in the color gradient can serve to highlight a particular phenomenon (for instance, a shift from positive to negative change).
Comparing these two types of maps considerably enriches reflection. The two images can be juxtaposed or superposed. In the case of a population, the total numbers show the size of one country compared to another, whereas values per 100 inhabitants represent the intensity of a phenomenon within each country (making it possible to compare countries of very different sizes).
Absence of order, difference or typology
The use of different color tones does not indicate a hierarchy; it only expresses difference or resemblance. Size, gradient, color, shape and orientation of the pictograms are often combined to emphasize the separation of the various elements so that the superposition of qualitative data does impair legibility.
These methodological considerations are far from exhaustive; we invite the reader to systematically cast a triple critical gaze on the maps – scrutinizing their message, design tricks and the data used – to see beyond the impression of a reflection of reality that they convey at first glance.
Visualizing proportionality, order and difference
- graphic semiology > Semiology of Graphics
- Developed by Jacques Bertin in the late 1960s, the semiology of graphics relates to the graphic transcription of phenomena. It focuses on organizing data logically, highlighting homogenous sets and communicating the result as effectively as possible.
- geography > Geography
- Geography: social science devoted to studying the production and organization of space. This space, which is differentiated and organized, serves social reproduction. Political geography: study of the spatial dimension of political organization, generally within states. Geohistory: geographic study of historical processes (diachronic).
- actors > Actor
- An individual, group, or organization whose actions affect the distribution of assets and resources on a global scale. The state has long been considered as the main actor on the international scene, but the number of non-state actors has increased and diversified (businesses, non-governmental organizations, special interest groups, mafias, religious actors, etc.) over the past few decades. Contemporary globalization has made the relationships between these actors more complex.
- networks > Network
- Classical geography tended to place too much importance on surface areas, territories, countries and soil, but network analysis has now become central to its approach. Networks are defined as spaces in which distance is discontinuous and consists of nodes linked by lines. Some are physical (networks for the transportation of people, goods and energy, IT cables and information super highways), others not. When they are partly virtual (such as the internet), they also involve individuals and organizations. Philosophers (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), sociologists (Manuel Castells), political scientists (James Rosenau), and economists use this concept to analyze the interconnected functioning of individuals.
- states > State
- The state is a political system that is centralized (unlike the feudal system), differentiated (from civil society, public/private space), institutionalized (institutions are depersonalized), territorialized (a territory whose borders mark the absolute limit of its jurisdiction), that claims sovereignty (holding ultimate power) and that bears responsibility for ensuring its population’s security. In public international law, the state is defined as a population living on a territory defined by borders subject to a political authority (the national territorial state).
- International organizations > International Organization
- In the words of Clive Archer, an IO is “a formal, continuous structure established by agreement between members (governmental and/or non-governmental) from two or more sovereign states with the aim of pursuing the common interest of the membership.” Marie-Claude Smouts identifies three characteristics of IOs: they arise out of a “founding act” (treaty, charter, statute), have a material existence (headquarters, finance, staff), and form a “coordination mechanism.
- flows > Flows
- Increasing flows of goods and assets, tangible and intangible, of capital and of people are characteristic of the globalization processes currently underway. This cross-border mobility constitutes a spatial phenomenon that geographers and cartographers, focused as they have been on territory, have been relatively slow to examine. These flows are organized in networks of varying degrees of density, not because territories and places are similar and interchangeable but because they are different and interdependent. They presuppose infrastructures (submarine cables, oil and gas pipelines, routes via land, sea, river and air) and logistics businesses (intermodal ports, freight airports, e-commerce warehouses, data hubs, etc.).
- NGOs > Nongovernmental Organization
- Use of this expression became more widespread following its inclusion in Article 71 of the United Nations Charter. NGOs do not have an international legal status and the acronym is used in different contexts to refer to very different kinds of actors. It generally designates associations formed by individuals over the long term in relation to not-for-profit goals, often linked to values and beliefs (ideological, humanist, ecological, religious, etc.) rather than financial interests. Active on a wide range of issues at both the local and global levels, NGOs now number tens of thousands, but vary greatly in the scale of their budgets, staff and development.
- poverty > Poverty
- Initially referring to a lack of economic resources, the notion of poverty has broadened in recent decades to include its different components, such as appalling sanitary conditions, a low level of education, social and gender inequalities, human rights violations, environmental damage, and increased vulnerability to so-called “natural” disasters. The Human Development Index (HDI) developed by the United Nations Development Program in the mid-1990s (and its gendered variant, Gender Development Index or GDI) and the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) devised by researchers at the University of Oxford in 2010, use Amartya Sen’s work on capabilities to identify the deprivation suffered by the poor in terms of health, education, and living standards.
- global corporations > Multinational corporation
- Company that has undertaken foreign direct investment (FDI) giving it access to facilities that it owns fully or in part (subsidiaries). The first MNCs date from the late 19th century; corporations of this kind have become widespread in the early 21st century. The majority of FDI takes place between industrialized nations. Such companies are now transnational rather than multinational, the largest among them tending to evolve into global corporate networks.
- migrations > Migration
- Movement of people leaving their country of origin permanently (emigration) to relocate to another country (immigration), which might be voluntary or forced (war, poverty, unemployment, human rights violations, climate factors, etc.), and which often involves temporary stays of varying duration in several transit countries. Migratory flows, which are an integral component of humanity’s history, give rise to a range of public policy measures linked to specific political, economic and cultural contexts and understandings of nationality. Host states seek to organize immigration, sometimes to attract it (need for labor, exploitation of specific territories, naturalizations, etc.), and most often to restrict it (border controls, quotas, residence permits, etc.). In most cases the states of origin seek to maintain relations with their nationals and diaspora communities living abroad.
- tax havens > Tax Haven
- A territory that uses its sovereignty to establish fiscal and legal exemption regimes (banking secrecy, low or non-existent taxation, fast, flexible procedures, limited or non-existent administrative requirements, etc.) that are then used by multinational companies, hedge funds, wealthy individuals and organized crime networks to escape the tax and justice systems of their home country. Tax havens are key links in the financial globalization chain and are regarded as a threat to global economic stability. However, in practice they are treated with indulgence by large states more keen to benefit from the system than to change it, and almost all have tax havens under their control.
- mafias > Mafia
- Term originally referring to Italian criminal groups, it is now applied generically to all illegal economic networks based on organized crime (drugs, rackets, prostitution, counterfeiting, etc.). These groups, the least well-known of all transnational actors, are highly organized, strictly hierarchical and growing fast in states that either tolerate them or cannot control them (Russia, China, Mexico, Colombia), where their role within the economy can be considerable.
- risks > Risk
- Risk refers to the perception and recognition of dangers and threats to individuals and to the environment. Having first appeared in academic and political thinking in the late 19th century, with the emergence of a welfare state whose role was to protect against the new social risks, the notion of risk developed in recent decades in the light of the globalization of trade and scientific and technological innovation. In his book Risk Society (1992), German sociologist Ulrich Beck analyzes the transition from “modern” societies built on the dogma of economic growth and technological progress to “post-modern” societies based on the production, management and regulation of risk. This is reflected in the rise of the precautionary principle, which seeks to anticipate the possible or probable consequences of natural and industrial disasters, epidemics or technological innovation, in order to protect the affected populations.
- individuals > Individual
- The individual, as a basic social actor, is playing an increasingly important role in the processes of globalization for multiple reasons, including the ever-faster circulation of ideas, values and information; the ability to build networks for sharing and solidarity without physical proximity; the networking of international expertise; and human rights movements and demands for democracy.
- space > Space
- A term with multiple meanings and uses and a category given far less consideration by philosophers than the concept of time. Space as a concept has long been a theoretical difficulty (lack of consensus) for geographers – for whom it should be the primary object of study. Contrary to the common representation of space as a natural expanse filled by societies, space is a social product that is constantly reconstructed by social interactions. It constitutes one of the dimensions of our social life, at once material and cultural. To speak of social space does not in itself tell us what form this space takes – whether it is territorial, or networked, or both at once.
- inequalities > Inequality
- Unequal distribution of goods, material and/or non-material, regarded as necessary or desirable. Beyond income inequality (national, international and global), cumulative inequalities can also be measured with respect to accessing public services (healthcare, education, employment, housing, justice, effective security, etc.) and accessing property and natural resources more generally, and also relative to political expression or the capacity to respond to ecological risks. When these inequalities are based on criteria prohibited by law, they constitute discrimination.
- federal > Federalism
- At national level, federalism is a mode of government that grants a high level of autonomy to the political communities federated within it. The allocation of responsibilities between federal and regional levels of government, in principle strictly defined, often remains flexible in practice (e.g. the paradiplomacy conducted by the province of Quebec, the German Länder, the Swiss cantons and the states of Brazil). Internationally the federal model is defended within the European Union by advocates of greater political integration, opposed by defenders of the sovereignist model which is more intergovernmental, inter-state in its approach.
- semiology of graphics > Semiology of Graphics
- Developed by Jacques Bertin in the late 1960s, the semiology of graphics relates to the graphic transcription of phenomena. It focuses on organizing data logically, highlighting homogenous sets and communicating the result as effectively as possible.
- geographic information system > Geographic Information System
- A geographic information system combines a database, software, hardware and human skills in order to gather, analyze, manage and represent georeferenced information and data (in other words, having latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates). GIS are used both by public actors to manage a territory or network and by private actors to optimize their activities (marketing).