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European societies as exhibitingnuptiality
controls, an observation that has led some to
argue for a distinctive form of late and variable
marriage age, particularly for women, in west-
erneurope(Hajnal, 1965), and which has been
used as a basis for understanding the notion of
anuptiality valveprimarily responsible for Eng-
lish demographic growth rates rather than the
positive check in the period between the six-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries (Wrigley
and Schofield, 1989 [1981]).
While the Malthusian model has been
viewed as a particularly effective device
through which to understand a key period in
England’s demographic history, it has also
received much criticism. It is thought to have
failed as predictor of the future, at least in its
more pessimistic form, since population
growth was sustained at a high rate through
much of the nineteenth century, and living
standards rose and fertility fell as populations
resorted increasingly to marital fertility con-
trol, and at the same time infant and child
mortality fell dramatically, principally as a
result of eradication of infectious disease,
largely through relatively low-cost public
health interventions. Of course, others would
argue that Malthus’ arguments applied largely
to aninorganic economyin which land was in
fixed supply and the principal source of energy
was the sun, and animal and human muscle
power, so that when human societies began to
use locked-upenergyin the form of coal and
oil, the constraints that Malthus took as a basis
for this approach were removed. A major criti-
cism of Malthus’ notion offamineas a posi-
tive check brought about byoverpopulation
is associated with the work of Amartya Sen
(1981), who has suggested that few if any
faminescan be directly attributed to food
availability declines but, rather, to institutional
andmarketfailures in delivering food to those
whose entitlements were not being met.
Critics have also rejected Malthus’ conserva-
tive acceptance of the political status quo and
his objection to welfare from the collectivity in
the form of poor relief, which he supposed
undermined the willingness of populations to
exercise moral restraint (Winch, 1998). More
recently, historical demographers ofasia in
particular have taken issue with Malthus’
inherent eurocentrism, reflected in his
portrayal of China as exemplifying a high-
pressure demographic regime in which unre-
stricted fertility and high mortality brought
about recurrent crises as populations grew to
sizes far too large for their food base (Lee and
Feng, 1999). Such critics emphasize the roleof breast-feeding, birth spacing and infanticide
as means of constraining reproduction,
notwithstanding early marriage of women,
and stress the presence of effective welfare
institutions, particularly controls on grain
supplies and markets as insulation against
harvest failure. rmsmap A representation of all or a portion of
the planet or some other vast environment: the
typical map is graphic and includes discernible
elements ofscale, projection (seemap projec-
tion) and symbolization. As this definition
suggests, delineating the notion of map is
hardly straightforward (Andrews, 1996). For
one thing, not all maps are graphic, and even
though the term is derived from the Latin
mappa(the cloth-paper on which early maps
were inscribed), not all graphic maps are
drawn or printed on paper. Aerial photog-
raphy andremote sensinggave rise to the
image map, which has scale, projection and
symbol-like tones, and readily becomes a
cartographic map with the addition of line
symbols or feature names.digital cartog-
raphyintroduced thedigital map, which can
be queried and analysed by ageographic
information system(gis) without ever creat-
ing a graphic image. Definitions that include
theterritorymapped are problematic insofar
as telescopes and rocketry, in making possible
maps of the Moon, Mars, other planets or
various asteroids (not to mention representa-
tions of the solar system, galaxies and the uni-
verse), have rendered ‘graphic representation
of Earth’ inaccurately narrow. Robinson and
Petchenik (1976, p. 16), who worried that
‘representation of the environment’ might
unduly privilege physical features, contrived
the relatively neutral but rarely used ‘graphic
representation of the milieu’. Harley and
Woodward (1987, p. xvi), in promoting the
history of cartography (see cartography,
history of) as a scholarly endeavour, offered
the comparatively wordy definition ‘graphic
representations that facilitate a spatial under-
standing of things, concepts, conditions, pro-
cesses or events in the human world’, which
concisely describes the focus of most contem-
porary scholars who claimcartographyas a
specialization. As this last definition implies,
academic cartographers study not only carto-
graphic artefacts but also the process of map-
ping and its impacts.
All mapimageshave three principal elem-
ents: scale, projection and symbolization.
Scaleis defined as the ratio of distance on the
map to the corresponding distance on theGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_M Final Proof page 434 1.4.2009 3:19pmMAP