Immappancy:
If you’ve come across the concepts of illiteracy and innumeracy, then computer graphic enthusiast Kai Krause, who developed the innovative infographic The True Size of Africa, feels the term immappancy should be used to describe those with ‘insufficient geographical knowledge.’ [“The True Size of Africa“, Toni Pyke, DevelopmentEducation.ie]
Immappancy has not yet entered the lexicon maintained by dictionaries, and thus this relatively informal definition. Insofar as the referenced Kai Krause goes, he was recently critiqued for using improper country representations, which he apparently admits, as well as dubious reasoning, in “Map Wars: Mercator, Peters, and Cartographic Controversies,” Benjamin Radford, Skeptical Inquirer (Volume 50, No. 3; paywall):
Ultimately, [Kenneth Field, principal lecturer in geographic information systems at Kingston University,] wrote, “I don’t take issue with the idea of exposing the problem of spatial illiteracy, or immappancy as Krause has defined it, but he is profoundly guilty of similar levels of immappancy by creating a completely inaccurate depiction. He is demonstrating his own immappancy” … .
Despite the viral and vociferous nature of Krause’s map, it is in fact wrong in significant ways. But I got the impression many elided the errors and deceptions because it was issued in service of a noble cause: social justice. The Krause map, however factually flawed, helps decolonize education and mitigate Eurocentric structural racism.
I’ve enjoyed the results of cartography for most of my life, and innovative approaches can be positively fascinating. If you’ve not heard of Tufte’s Napoleon’s March To Moscow, well, you should go take a look. Such examples of innovation are widely available on the Web; fusions of geography as modified by population and some other attribute, such as political leanings, often clarify reality. Krause’s approach is interesting and thought provoking. For example, is a purely physical measurement of size appropriate, or, in view of the current uneven distribution of deserts, should we measure by carrying capacity, or other rarely used comparative measure?
But if you’ve seen Krause’s original work, you should be aware of the accompanying inflammatory rhetoric. Given its assumptions, mistakes, and implicit tenets, such as identitarianism, it didn’t feel so much innovative as a case of virtue signaling. Yes, it may have been unconscious, but given the critiques I’ve seen, I’m not sure I’d be looking to Krause for wisdom.
