Geography is objective, right?

A hand-drawn Silicon-Valley-centric map of the world.Source: http://gapingvoid.com/2008/08/05/silicon-valley-map/

Continents?

• What defines a “continent”?• How many are there?• What are they?

What is a continent?

“In contemporary usage, continents are understood to be large, continuous, discrete masses of land, ideally separated by expanses of water.”

- Lewis & Wigen, The Myth of Continents (1997)

7 continents?

Or 6?

Or 5?

Or 4?

So what’s the moral of the continent story?

That “humans have habitually constructed geographical spaces to suit their particular purposes or ideologies. They do not simply find those spaces out there in nature.”

- Ross Dunn, “Big Geography and World History”

Some Terminology

• What is the “West”?• What is the “East”?• Why isn’t Latin America in the “West”?• China is the “Far East” … but isn’t it to our west?