Political Cartograms: Je suis la Cisjordanie

Every fourth fall we see a flurry of maplike charts, or cartograms, showing states' voting power. Rhode Island larger than Alaska. So for October let's look at some political cartograms, starting with one I made in 2015.

I slid my native Black Hills (the green rectangle) under Israel’s borders and labels, keeping the scale the same. I was amazed how the West Bank matched the main body of the Hills, in size and even shape.

My political point was anticolonial, equating two pieces of stolen ground. Je suis la Cisjordanie, "I am the West Bank," was a twist on Je suis Charlie, a popular free-speech slogan following 2015's Charlie Hebdo attacks.

My cartographic point is that cartograms are not just "value-area" maps, resizing states and countries. Pace Wikipedia.

Come see my talks! Tuesday 8 October 2024 in Rapid City. 11am Lunch-n-Learn on using landscape photos in research, School of Mines Classroom Building 205. 6pm talk on Yellow More with cash bar, Journey Museum. Lots of photos and Q&A.

2015-03-12, 43.8366 -103.6234, 31.7780 35.2354. And there is no such thing as a thematic map, but that's for another day. Robert Wellman Campbell, "Political Cartograms: Je suis la Cisjordanie," RSS Longa, PD via CC0 1.0, 3 October 2024.