When you look at a map, what direction is usually at the top? Most likely, it will be north. But have you ever stopped to think why that was? When viewing the earth from space, is there an inherent top and bottom to the planet? Other cultures and eras have oriented their maps with different directions on top. As we will see, our current standard is an old vestige of European imperialism that carries on to this day. This can be seen most clearly by the economic division of the globe into the Global North and the Global South, with the Global North referring to the richest countries in the world and the Global South the poorest. However, we might benefit from taking a step back and looking at our world from a different perspective and challenging typically accepted naming conventions that reinforce harmful stereotypes.
As you probably learned in school, the earth is roughly a sphere, though not exactly. Importantly, it is not only revolving around the sun, but it is also spinning on its own axis as it does so. This rotational axis runs from the north pole to the south pole. As these two points on the earth’s surface have scientific significance we generally think of them respectively as the top and bottom of the world. Is this idea accurate though? Despite the fact that we portray the earth as spinning like a top with its axis aligned vertically, who is to say the axis isn’t horizontal like a spherical wheel with east and west taking their turns on top? This raises the question, is there an objective up or down in space?
While we can say that there are ups and downs in outer space, what is up and what is down is largely dependent on what the position of the largest gravitational object is in relation to a single point. Thus, as we should all be able to guess, from wherever we are reading this, down will most likely be towards the earth because it is exerting the greatest gravitational pull on us. This would mean that down for the earth itself would be in the direction of the sun. Thankfully for life on earth, the sun doesn’t remain in a fixed position in relation to the earth’s surface. Thus, using that definition of up and down wouldn’t be very useful for drawing maps.
Instead, throughout history we have had to decide for ourselves which direction we would choose to put at the top of the map, with no objectively right or wrong answer. And as history will show, depending on where or when we look, different people chose different directions to put on top. For example, in ancient Egypt, maps were drawn with east on top, and early Islamic maps were oriented so that the south was on top. In fact, it was very rare to find ancient maps with the north on the top for the reason that north was where the darkness came from.
So what changed? Why are almost all modern maps drawn with north on top when for so long that had been the exception instead of the rule? It’s tempting to assume that the invention of the compass had something to do with it, as today, most compasses point north. However, the first compasses were actually invented in China and originally they had pointed south. Even when European “explorers” *ahem* murderers *ahem* like Columbus and Magellan began using north-pointing compasses and the north star to navigate, there is evidence that points to them still using maps that had the east on top. In fact, it wasn’t until the 16th century when European imperialism was at its height that we began to see north up maps become popular. This was done largely to reflect the perceived superiority of the European imperial core and the Eurocentrism of the times. As psychologist Brian Meier, at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania found out, people often associate up with good and down with bad. Thus it makes sense that the imperial powers would want to position themselves on the top of the map.
To challenge this convention, some map makers south of the equator such as McArthur in Australia have created “upside down” maps with south once again situated at the top of the map. While these are clever and give us an opportunity to see the world from a different perspective, they tend to be made as a political statement or tourist souvenir rather than being adopted for serious academic or navigational purposes.
If you’re interested in economics or sustainability you may have heard the term “Global North” thrown around, but what does this term even mean? It would be easy to assume it is synonymous with the northern hemisphere, or anything north of the equator, but that isn’t entirely true. According to the Cambridge Dictionary the Global North is defined as “the group of countries that are in Europe, North America, and the developed parts of Asia”. This definition is pretty vague, so instead we will look at the Brandt Line which was developed in the 1980’s as a way of dividing the world, with the relatively richer countries above the line, and generally poorer countries below the line. While it should be noted that there are exceptions such as Ukraine which is relatively poor in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, yet sits above the Brandt Line, and Argentina, Malaysia, and Botswana that have above average GDP per capita, yet sit below it. This line has come to define what many economists mean when they refer to the Global North or the Global South.
Because sustainability and sustainable development is widely considered to have three main pillars, one of which is economic sustainability (the others are social and environmental sustainability), the term Global North gets used quite a bit when exploring sustainability-related issues. One of the major issues is that while the countries in the Global North have historically contributed the most to the emission of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) which are driving anthropogenic (caused by humans) climate change, they are also the most economically prepared and thus at the least risk of suffering from the effects of climate change. Conversely, the Global South is especially vulnerable to the impact of global warming and climate change, but has had a comparatively small part to play in bringing it about.
Now remember how we mentioned Brian Meier and his study that found that people generally associate up with good and down with bad? He also found that when shown a map of a city, people generally would prefer to live to the north of the city and associated the area to the south or below the city center with people of a lower economic status. However, this could easily be reversed by showing them a map of the same city which had been rotated so the south was at the top of the map. This goes to show that how we orient our maps is important and plays a big role in how we view certain parts of the world. As we saw, this same bias has manifested on a global scale with our maps generally depicting the north on top, and with a majority of economically prosperous countries also being located north of the less economically prosperous countries.
At this point though, we need to address the giant elephant in the room, and that’s European and American imperialism and the role it played in both shaping our maps and distributing global wealth. It’s not by accident that just about all of the colonial powers of the past few centuries are located in the heart of the Global North. In fact, the Global North and Global South have seemingly come to replace the imperial core and imperial periphery respectively. However, this binary notion is not completely accurate or natural, and it’s important to keep in mind that one of the ways the colonial powers reinforced their claim to wealth and power was by convincing us that there was something natural or inherent in their superiority, and one of the ways they did this was by orienting the maps to put themselves at the top and center of the world. It is for this reason that the terms Global North and Global South, while being useful when confronting issues of inequalities, can be somewhat problematic because they can give the false impression that by their very nature, countries in the north will always be more prosperous than countries in the south.
This is why I wanted to reverse the narrative in our Fall/Winter 2023 collection, much like McArthur did, and feature a globe that had been turned upside down with the question “WHAT EVEN IS THE GLOBAL NORTH?” wrapped around it so that you were forced to turn your head to read the text. By forcing us to look at the world from a different perspective, I wanted to challenge the notion that Europe and North America were in any way better or superior to other continents. At the same time, we need to recognize the lines drawn by imperialism as invented constructs, but ones with very real ripple-effects that have dramatically impacted the lives of people across the globe.
We shouldn’t take anything for granted in life. Just because throughout our lives we have always associated north with up, and up with good, doesn’t mean there is anything objectively true with this association. We should always seek to challenge our presuppositions about the world and discover what new secrets lie behind the curtain of the status quo. After all, one of the first steps to making a positive change in the world is to learn how to see it in a new way.
-OM
Oliver Manifest