Category: Uncategorized (Page 8 of 19)

Several weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about wicked problems — challenges that are so complex and interconnected that they can seem impossible to unravel. Environmental problems tend to fall into this category, with numerous social, ecological, scientific, economic, and cultural factors competing and overlapping into one giant mess.

Our class discussion with Catherine Flowers reminded me of an important fact: if all of these problems seem connected, then the solutions can be connected too. If there’s a problem stemming from the intersection of race, poverty, and climate change, you can approach it from each of those angles in turn to see which tactics are most suited for your skill set, the available resources, and the overall sociopolitical context.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by an issue as huge as climate change, and that’s just one of many problems in the world that I sometimes think of as hopelessly insurmountable. But it’s comforting to know that you don’t have to spread yourself too thin and try to fix everything at once, and by focusing on one aspect of a larger issue, you don’t have to worry that you’re neglecting other important problems.

Catherine Flowers reminded us that you have to bring lots of people to the table when you’re trying to find solutions, even people that might otherwise have very different opinions and goals than you do. We can’t solve these huge, wicked problems on our own, and it will take many different people and groups chipping away from all sides to finally make a dent in things like climate change, poverty, discrimination, and inequality. But by focusing on what we’re passionate about, what we’re able to do, and what we’re able to build coalitions around, we might dismantle these different interconnected problems, piece by piece.

Catherine Flower’s hope in young people was contagious. Listening to Catherine speak about her life as an activist, about the positive potential she sees in our generation, was like someone smiling at you on a dull day and suddenly realizing that you are now smiling yourself because there is still so much to smile about, still so much hope. “Step into yourself” Catherine Flowers implored us. I then realized the importance of stepping into the potential of my actions, stepping into the discomfort and out of the comfort of silence. Silence will not generate change, but action, regardless of age, will.

Young people have seldom tapped pools of inspiration and energy. 7 high school students started Bill McKibben’s 350 campaign. 12 high school students started Jane Goodall’s organization, Roots and Shoots. It doesn’t always take one charismatic leader to shift ideology and values. Sometimes we need a network of leaders to spread and sustain a movement. What Bill McKibben considers a “leaderful” movement is a diverse and self-sustaining movement.  When you have a network of environmental leaders, the movement never dies out – it keeps regenerating momentum. Jane Goodall envisions “a critical mass of young people who understand that while we need money to live, we should not live for money” (pg. 188). Goodall calls us to realign our values and consider the value of world that supports life, the cost of not considering such value. McKibben calls for a “protean” movement. I admit I had to look up this word. Protean is defined as “readily assuming different forms; changeable in form or shape.” In this light, it makes sense that hope in youth underlies Goodall’s and McKibben’s messages; young people are adaptable and changing. It is my hope that we are ready to grow with and confront this changing world

I heard Jane Goodall speak a year ago at UT Arlington. I heard Bill McKibben speak last semester here at Duke. We have had the privilege to hear from activists Dr. Kirk, Crystal Dreisbach, and Catherine Flowers. These leaders spark a fresh motivation in me. Reflecting on the power of their words and actions, I realize our generation will have big shoes to step into. And I believe we also have shoes to make. Making activism accessible remains a challenge in the environmental movement, but I believe we will keep walking forward, gaining support with each step. Who’s ready to march?

Never before have I thought about maps as being alive. Constantly changing, constantly evolving, no two maps are the same and no two maps are made with the same intentions. Each map has its own biases and each map seeks to convince the viewer to accept a certain perspective.

But despite the diversity inherent in maps, they are still taken to be the truth and the authority. Therefore, when we went to the social movements lab talk, we learned that they are also currently being used as a form of social activism.

Upon heading about the use of mapping as a form of social activism, I decided to look into the possibility of mapping the Earth First movement. However the Earth First movement is not an organization but a movement and as stated on earthfirst.org, they believe in using all the tools in the tool box, ranging from grassroots organizing and involvement in the legal process to civil disobedience.” This unconventional movement has no goal except to put the earth and the earth’s needs first before those that threaten it. They seek to stop the most serious threats to their respective areas by doing anything necessary from litigation to creative civil disobedience. As a result, it will be hard to map out the work and actions of the unconventional Earth First movement due to their lack of “rules” and regulations.

However, thinking back on it, that may be the point, to map out an unconventional movement, one must use an unconventional map. Maybe to map out the Earth First movement, one must first identify the major ecological threats and then expand from there to see what has been done and what still needs to be done. Maybe rather than looking at what has been done, we must look at what still needs to be done? Now that would be an unconventional map!

Our discussion last week about maps and their importance in setting and shifting paradigms had me thinking about where and how these might be used as communication and storytelling tools. The radical mapping people were focused on college campuses, and other presenters talked about community activism and websites, but as a child with four teachers as grandparents, my mind went immediately to museums.

The presenters noted that people trust maps: if it’s on a map, it’s probably true. The same is true with museums: if it’s in a display, of course it’s trustworthy. And museums, more than most other places, can use maps in enormously powerful ways to depict justice, history, inequality, and the thousands of ways that our world has changed over time, from demographics to geography to climate to our borders themselves. Mapmakers have the power to choose who is represented, where the lines go, which parts to emphasize and how to group areas together. And as museums increasingly become places to delve into the gray areas of history and explore the subjective ways that different people tell the same story, maps become important tools in developing and changing those narratives.

This isn’t just the case for history museums, although they may have more ground to cover than most in order to correct the whitewashing and sanitization of our past. I’ve seen plenty of maps in natural history museums and science centers, depicting biomes, habitats, weather patterns, shifting climate conditions, and even the stories of people and animals affected by climate change. Art museums, too, can use maps to provide context for different works, show how different regions influenced each other, and trace the intersections of art, culture, and history at scales as large as continents or as small as cities.

But as an environmental policymaker and activist, I was most interested in our discussion of how maps can be overlayed to provide a richer perspective on different data measures. Statistical analysis, p values, and even perfectly valid numerical data is easy to manipulate and difficult to communicate, especially in a way that connects with people’s hearts, minds, and consciences. But maps let audiences not only draw those same conclusions on their own in a more engaging way than just numbers on a page, but also connect on a more personal level to the information and the story it tells. If I see a map of data for the United States, the first thing I do is look to see what it says about Tennessee and North Carolina — immediately, I’m able to directly relate myself and my experiences to the information in the map, and this lends itself to a much more convincing and striking conclusion because it impacts me personally rather than being another statistic that I can turn around and immediately forget. So as museums seek to create compelling narratives that educate, challenge, and engage children and adults alike, maps can provide a powerful tool for making and breaking worldviews to fit our ever-evolving understanding of ourselves.

From topographic maps to Google maps, I’d often thought of maps as stagnant entities that provide simplified information on navigating the world in terms of directions and special orientation. After the cartography lecture, my understanding of what maps can do and provide is growing mere directions to a myriad of ways maps allow and help the viewer to navigate the world.   Thinking of maps as storytelling platforms opens up a whole new dimension for what maps can provide. The map we saw on eviction locations that provided personal accounts of those affected was an example of how powerful and impactful maps can be as a storytelling medium. Robin Kirk noted in her lecture to the class that an important part of successful activism is making people care about the issue. Combining maps with personal accounts and other storytelling strategies is a unique, visually appealing, and interactive way to utilize the power of storytelling in activism to make people care. The idea that maps can challenge the way we understand the world, and show connections and correlations between seemingly separate things is appealing as a useful and diverse form of activism. In a world where social media is allowing people to interact in increasingly more visual and interactive ways, mapping as a form of activism and informative medium can be a powerful tool for activist groups.

Mapping social movement seems like a novel idea because of the ability to be able to clearly see the data laid out in front of the viewer. The map of the evictions in San Francisco was particularly appealing to me because it overlayed multiple factors that seemed to be at play when evicting the homeowners. Mapping social movements looks like it would be more useful because you can lay out numerous different aspects onto a map and see the ones that are truly having an impact. This spring break I was reminded of the importance of maps when it comes to the conservation of seabirds. I was able to participate in a project that mapped the flyway of the sooty tern, a seabird, off of the Southern Atlantic Ocean.

The work being done by our research team has allowed scientists to understand where the sooty tern goes after it leaves the Florida Keys and when the bird comes back to breed. Scientists initially were able to tell that the birds went to the equator by tagging the birds with a data logger but there were issues with the precision of the data loggers. Technology soon improved and some of the birds were tagged with a GPS tracker that recorded the bird’s movement every single hour. By knowing the location of the birds, scientists were able to construct an accurate GIS map that allowed them to see the damage inflicted by hurricanes on the Sooty Terns. Another exciting map that was created because of the GPS revolved around the migration time of the birds. The Sooty Terns used to come to the Florida Keys every year in June and lay their eggs. However, now they no longer come in June, but instead, they come in March to nest. Scientists were initially baffled by this and came up with the hypothesis that the birds were coming earlier because March was the start of the shrimping season in Key West and they could get by-catch from the boats. By having the GPS tracker, our head researcher was able to overlay the location of the Sooty Terns against where the shrimping activity has been taken place and disprove that hypothesis. Mapping of the bird distribution remains a critical part of science one that can illustrate the health of the oceans and the map also makes it easier for scientists to see where the birds are most vulnerable.

Although I like the idea of mapping social movements, protests, and organization as a means of activism itself, I remain skeptical on the effectiveness of the tool.

I realize that there are compelling arguments supporting the use of maps, such as for a clear visualization of connections and patterns, or as a storytelling medium. Maps are particularly adept at these abilities since are in a gray zone between facts and fiction; they are often perceived as facts, although they can often include mistakes or lies. For instance, Sebastian Münster’s map of the “New World” in 1540 looks nothing like modern maps, but it was accepted as true at the time. Even today we take it for granted that our maps are accurate, even though the scale and area of countries are off.

Sebastian Münster’s Map of the “New World”. Link: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/95/d3/f2/95d3f28651694e96e07b1d2cb4c27cbf.jpg

However, although the notion that maps are statements and facts can be used to tell powerful stories or draw striking connections as we saw this past week, I believe that they can be exploited as well. As we mentioned in class, no maps are biased. Where we might analyze data tied to locations and map the results, opposers may dismiss it as invalid or even create a counterargument through a map.

Furthermore, I feel that there are more effective alternatives when it comes to sparking a social movement or change, in particular social media. We have seen countless of movements, protests, and marches stem from online activity, such as the Arab Spring, #MeToo, or even this weekend’s March for Our Lives.

All in all, I agree that we have do voice our opinions in today’s society, especially when it comes to environmental issues. I just don’t know if mapping social movements is the best way to do so.

The Radical Mapping in Social Movements presentation illustrated the possibility and effectiveness of mapping social movements, a deviation from the historically flat and categorized practice of map making. If we can map social movements, I think we can map any sort of movement: social, physical, ideological, etc. One movement conservationists have begun to map are those of sea turtles. Researchers are able to map the migration patterns and nesting sites of sea turtles around the globe, which creates visual evidence of the need for specific conservation sites and makes scientific research more accessible to the public.

Andrew DiMatteo, cartographer and database manager of the State of the World’s Sea Turtles (SWOT) Project and Associate in Research at Duke University won a conservation award from Conservation International for using GIS software to map green sea turtle nesting sites. Discussing critical cartographies, we identified maps as avenues for collaboration. The sea turtle nesting map produced by SWOT has promoted collaboration among scientists from all over the globe with a long list of countries contributing data on sea turtles as well as collaboration between the public and researchers on conservation efforts. Maps have the potential to be seen as “productive, producing something, not just representing something” (Radical Mapping in Social Movements). From conservation efforts to social movements, maps provide visuals that engage and apply information into something physical that demands space and attention, and attention to efforts like conservation and social movements is exactly what we need to garner support for change.

Previously, I looked at maps as a navigating medium. They make life simpler by laying out cities and towns making it easy to locate one’s destination. However, maps are more telling than this. In actuality, maps are a potential story telling platform. Constantly changing, they share the relationship between groups of people among spaces, connections between events, but most importantly they develop new perspectives on the world we live in. Drawing a map allows us to bring to life, the world we wish to see or examine critically. Therefore, we may create beautiful maps that educate new students on programs and buildings on a college campus or we create a map displaying a city’s gentrification to criticize public policy.

In the process of creating a map, one has the power to produce new social organizations and relationships between people. This results in new forms of solidarity because people can locate and connect themselves to others. For instance, by connecting the oral histories of people who were evicted from their homes, we not only identify areas of gentrification but unite the people suffering from such injustice. Amidst the alienation they suffer, those who were evicted can find unification and connectivity when sharing their stories. I found this highly surprising because the map can have three visible effects: political, educational, and emotional. It builds a political argument by localizing the areas of gentrification in communities. It educates society about where this is taking place and it unites those suffering from eviction or homelessness.