The Dictionary of Human Geography

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to all peoples’ despite severe north–south

stretching in the Tropics and comparatively

reliable shapes and angles across western

Europe and the northern USA (Monmonier,

2004b). Several other equal-area projections

offer a more balanced pattern of shape dis-

tortion, and numerous compromise projec-

tions attempt to balance distortions of area

and angles. Map authors eager to focus on

people, rather than land area, can map socio-

economic data on acartogram, on which area

represents population (Tobler, 1963). mm

Suggested reading

Monmonier (2004b); Snyder (1993).

map reading The process of extracting

information from amap, which is fundamental

cartographic practice (see cartography).

Textbooks on the reading and use of maps

andglobeswere produced from the 1500s

onwards, as a required part of a noble or gen-

teel education. After 1650, they became a

mainstay of public discourse and, after 1800,

of regularized primary education in centraliz-

ing European states. Exercises in map-reading

were integral toHeimatkunde, the initial stage

of the formal curriculum in geography

adopted in German primary schools after

1871 and subsequently emulated throughout

western Europe and Japan. After 1900, the

interpretation of larger-scaletopographical

mapsdeveloped as a key skill for the study of

landscapes within both academic geography

and the military (cf.military geography).

Militaries have generated a variety of technical

manuals, and military-orientated tasks domin-

ated the curricula of introductory map-reading

courses in many US universities after the

Second Worldwar. The needs of the military

also drove academic research in cartography

andhuman geographyinto the cognitive pro-

cesses of map reading to support the produc-

tion of maps that could be read easily and

effectively, while behavioural geography

included research into the development of

map-reading skills amongchildrenand adults

(and also their production ofmental maps).

In all these circumstances, map reading has

been understood as comprising four tasks,

regardless of mapscale:

(1) the identification and location of particu-

lar places;

(2) navigation, which entails route-selection,

position-verification and anticipation of

the future;

(3) the identification of patterns, distributions

and morphologies of spatial features;

(4) the cartometric endeavours of taking

measurements from maps, whether as

simple as determining distances or areas

or as complex as the statistical analysis of

a map’s geometrical accuracy (Maling,

1989).

These tasks have all been applied to old as well

as modern maps (seecartography, history

of). In terms ofontology, such map-reading

practices sustain the modern ideology of

cartography (see alsocartographic reason).

Their repeated performance within authorita-

tive state institutions has naturalized the

expectation that maps are intended to be used

onlyin such specific ways. (The automatic

reaction to critical approaches to cartography

is thus to appeal to the functional authority

and so legitimation of the road map.)

Against this limited and only partially

adequate perspective, recent critics have sought

to read maps as cultural documents, to eluci-

date their cultural and social significance

(Edwards, 2003). Two approaches are espe-

cially rewarding. Strongly influenced by art-

historical studies in iconography, Harley

(2001b) construed maps to comprise two layers

of meaning: an overt layer of factual data, dir-

ectly accessed through standard map-reading

techniques, and an obscured layer of cultural

meaning to be elucidated through identification

and consideration of a map’s conventional and

iconological symbolism. Wood and Fels (in

Wood, 1992, pp. 95–142) advanced a more sys-

tematic analysis of maps as semiotic systems in

their reading of a common road map; their essay

has deservedly become theparadigmof critical

map interpretation. Even so, their analysis of the

differential and structured deployment of signs

was preliminary. That is, the desideratum of a

comprehensive and rigorous methodology for

reading maps as cultural documents remains

to be completed. (See alsoculture.) mhe

Suggested reading

Edwards (2003); Wood (1992, esp. pp. 95–142).

market The market is indisputably an

example of what Raymond Williams (1976)

called a ‘keyword’. It is as a consequence

rather complex, its meanings have been unstable

historically, and its use and deployment always

‘inextricably bound up with the problems it

was being used to discuss’ (p. 15). Adam

Smith famously noted that there was an intrin-

sic human propensity to truck, barter and

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_M Final Proof page 439 1.4.2009 3:19pm

MARKET