Upside down maps. Options

[radhikaeatsraman]

http://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/

Now that's highly interesting. My geography teacher showed us these maps at the beginning of the year, and I managed to stumble across them on the internet again this time.

It's fascinating how maps shape our perception of the world and how different they look depending on which part of the world you're in. That so-called "upside down" map would actually be the norm in an Australian classroom.

Do maps made from a North American or European perspective create a Western-centric perspective of the world? How does one's perspective of the world change when seeing different maps?

[viugiufgjhfhjfhg...]

I can vouche for spanish maps having Spain in the center of the "world" as well as representing the country as bigger than it actually is; as a matter of fact, our High School geography teacher wouldn't let us use our text book maps and handed us Peters' maps for our assignments, since it seems those offer the most accurate representation of the world (in a bi-dimensional sense, I guess).

I could see how maps like the ones I was supposed to use being accompanied by lectures influenced by etnocentrism could affect someone's perspective of the world; still speaking in terms of a visual representation of such, of course. However, the solution to the problem seems to be as complicated as to be shown the other main representations of the round earth on a flat surface.

For more information of map related dilemmas:

http://www.petersmap.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall-Peters_projection