Coffee And Cannibals Summary

Frank Jacobs takes an unorthodox approach to quantifying the perceived political geography of Earth in his article “Coffee and Cannibals – the Weird Geography of Autocomplete Maps.” By examining a series of maps, ostensibly generated from Google’s search autocomplete, Jacobs attempts to provide readers with insight into the “mental maps” of different cultures. Before analyzing the article, it is important to first understand exactly what a mental map is in the context of political geography. Geographer D.C.D Pockcock defines a mental map as being “concerned with locational and special characteristics, the ‘whereness’ content, mental maps constitute the skeletal framework of the more rounded phenomenon of the image, some parts of which are clearly aspatial in nature.” Pockcock’s definition may be verbose, but it hits the nail on the head: mental maps are the intangible, abstract, preconceived notions that we …show more content…
Considering the Tibetan example, differences in cultural perception of the world could certainly lead to conflict. Samuel Huntington is renowned in the field of political science for proposing that the next phase of world politics will be “The Clash of Civilizations. Here, Huntington argues that “the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.” If neighboring cultures have different mental maps about who rightfully controls a geographic place, war is possible. Tibet is not the only instance of the Chinese cultural perspective clashing with the West. Bejing’s Ministry of Education has published the infamous “nine-dash” and “251-dash” maps, claiming legitimate control of vast swaths of sea and islands. Chinese cultural revanchism is a key factor in the communist state’s claim over Taiwan, as supporters of the regime truly believe that Taiwan is still a part of China’s