Leaving Awake

While attending 3GPP SA2 69 in November 2008 in Miami, I had a chance to wander around their annual book fair. There were a few small press stands, a few do-it-yourself publishers and numerous organizations, mostly local of a political or cultural nature. I liked the kids area a lot, though all in all I couldn't find much underground publishing there.

I picked up a few used comic books and a very interesting volume: The Geography Coloring Book by Wynn Kapit.



My thought was to share this with my daughter Hannah, who at that time was 13 - interested in the world but not very savvy on where and what yet. She had no time for this back then and the volume got stuck into a cabinet. By chance I grabbed this volume last night, following a Spring Cleaning of my office. I looked at it fresh and read a few articles.

The general idea is quite appealing. Maps of different regions and polities emphasize major features and you color those in (with a colored pencil, using a photocopy of the images provided in the book.) This gives you a feeling of the actual contours, names and adjacencies of far away places. Since you draw it yourself there's a chance this enters into your brain from a different channel than merely scanning a picture.

Reading a bit further (text accompanies each picture, describes each country and geopolitical region) I was struck by the extremely political nature of even this cursory treatment of geography. The maps do not include resources or productive industry though the text does mention these briefly when they are quite notable. Mainly what are emphasized are borders and cities - major rivers and mountain chains and highest peaks are also present, but not colored in. What I've come to learn is that many borders are quite imprecise or disputed. It actually leads to the wrong impression to color in borders that either do not exist de facto,or only de facto but not legally, or are points of great tension. The maps and text cite only a few examples of territorial disputes such as the Western Sahara and Nagorno Karabakh.

Further complicating this are secessionist movements - or federal republics in dissolution. It is reasonable to draw a border around such places, but interesting also to note the lines of division - if there are any clear ones. Some geographies are so diverse in their population distribution that there are no clear lines that one can draw at all.

Most concerning of all, I found that the descriptions of different countries full of capsule judgments of their history, recent political events and their political system that were quite superficial and conventional; confirming stereotypical and facile interpretations of deep persistent problems. Just to name one example, the book blames the poverty and instability of Haiti on "corruption" and the Duvaliers. Such an explanation seems to do more harm than good. So much dreadful history and complicity swept away in a few words! I don't think you can develop a sense of the conflicts by coloring in pictures or reading a paragraph of text - at least not these pictures and this text.